


Risk and Chance

by aradian_nights



Series: How the Other Half Lives [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Luke and Leia Switched, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-02 09:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 31,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11506092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aradian_nights/pseuds/aradian_nights
Summary: Leia Skywalker and her friends, Luke Organa and Han Solo, infiltrate Cymoon 1. When Darth Vader arrives unexpectedly, she leaps at the chance to face him.





	1. fight and flight

**Author's Note:**

> told you guys i'd have the new story up soon!! this chapter follows the very first arc of the star wars (2015) comic, while the second chapter will delve a bit into the darth vader comic. also keep in mind there are subplots to this arc i decided to brush over because they took up too much time.
> 
> i think after these two chapters i'll start empire strikes back.

The sands were always moving in silence. To the naked eye, the dust was solid and stagnant while the crystal sky above stood like a bleached ocean.

She had never seen an ocean. But in her heart, she knew.

As far as her eyes could travel, there was nothing but orange caked earth meeting at a thin, hardly registerable line where it met the glassy sky. She reached out and patted the sand. It was rough and dry, and she felt that clearly, but somehow it was as cool as the durasteel panels of a ship floor.

When she flipped her palms over, grains of sand bit into her skin and remained stuck to the creases of her hands. The bandages that she had wrapped around her knuckles earlier were gone. That ugly yellow jacket she had borrowed, and subsequently stolen, from Han was not cuffed neatly at her wrists, and her necklaces were missing.

She sat for a moment, peering around the familiar landscape, sunrays threatening to carve permanent scratches of white glare into her retinas, and she stood up. Her boots were soft-soled and as white as her tunic.

"Hello again."

Leia did not whirl around at the sound of the smooth, gravelly voice. She stood facing the suns, which were inching toward the horizon steadily. Her fingers closed into fists, and the sand on her palms grinded together irritably.

"Why am I here?" she asked. She turned her head to look at the man beside her, who seemed to tower over her like a pillar. She had to crane her neck to meet his eye.

Qui-Gon Jinn did not visit her often. This was the second time she had ever seen him, and he had not changed. His square face was serene as he watched her, his arms buried in his sleeves. Like Ben's.

"This is your home," Qui-Gon said. "Where else would you be?"

"The ship I fell asleep on, maybe?"

Qui-Gon smiled. He knelt down in the sand, his robes pooling around him, and he watched her expectantly. Leia gazed at him for a moment before huffing, whirling on her heel to face him, and dropping to her knees. They watched each other silently.

"You've grown some," he remarked.

"You haven't changed at all." She wrinkled her nose and glanced up at the sky. It was about the same as it had been when she, Han, and Luke had come here a few weeks before. Tatooine never changed. It was one of the things she had hated about it.

"Well, I am dead, little one."

It had been long enough that she had forgotten how confusing conversing with this man could be. She met his gaze with a frown.

"So is Ben," she pointed out. She paused to study Qui-Gon's face, which remained serene as ever, and she tore her eyes away glumly. "But I guess you already knew that."

"The Force works in mysterious ways, Leia," he said. "Obi-Wan knew that better than anyone."

"And now he's dead." She couldn't help the bitterness that slid into her tone, tainting what had once been all encompassing fondness and leaving her hopelessly confused. "Did he die trying to save me? Did he  _want_  to die?"

Qui-Gon looked pensive, and for a moment it seemed like he would reply. Then he shook his head. "Those are not answers I can give you," he said.

"Then why are you here?" Leia snapped. She flung her arms into the air incredulously, flicking her hands around her and swerving her head. "Why am  _I_  here? Obviously there is something you'd like to tell me, or else you'd never indulge me in such a rare and cryptic dream visit!"

Her shouting did not seem to faze him. He blinked at her, and his gaze remained steady as her arms wilted back to her sides. Her impatience heightened, and her hands closed into fists.

"Well?" she demanded.

"It is dangerous to hold a grudge, Leia," Qui-Gon said.

She met his eye sharply. He watched her knowingly, as though he felt the wickedness inside her heart, and she shook her head slowly.

"I'm not Ben," she said. Her voice was low, but it was solid. "I can't just… ignore that the man who killed my Master is still out there! I could never be who he was. He was too  _good_."

"And you aren't, Leia?"

She grimaced. She folded her hands in her lap, and she bowed her head low.

"I don't know what I am," she said softly.

Qui-Gon watched her with a calm and steady gaze, and he stood up. His feet padded softly against the dust as he walked toward her almost with hesitance, like he could not be sure if this was what she wanted. And then he offered out both his hands.

"Perhaps you can start," he said, "with you are a Jedi."

Leia looked up at him with wide eyes. It wasn't that she had been doubting that. She felt as connected to the Jedi as she could, considering the circumstances, and Ahsoka was full of praise whenever their missions aligned. But had she ever truly doubted that this was the path she belonged on?

No. Never.

And yet, the Jedi were a source of good. Had she not just doubted her own innate goodness?

Leia reached up and grasped his hands. He pulled her to her feet, and she rocked back blinking up at him with wide eyes.

"I am a Jedi," she echoed. She squeezed his hands, and she took a deep breath. "I am a  _Jedi_."

He smiled. And then the sand beneath her gave way.

She bolted upright, momentarily breathless as the feeling of falling endlessly overcame her. Her eyes adjusted, Tatooine skies fading fast from her eyes as the dimness of the shuttle, all its gray panels and artificial light humming into life around her.

For a moment she merely breathed deeply, her fingers drawing shakily toward her forehead. She wiped the sweat from her brow and rested her forehead against her fist.

"Are you alright, Leia?"

She spared a glance at Luke, who occupied the seat across from her. He had already changed into his guardsman uniform, helmet hanging loosely from one hand as he peered at her. The high collar of his white tunic was peeking out beneath the desert wool. Half his battered breastplate was unbuckled. She slung her legs over the side of the bench and crossed the hold, lowering herself beside him and absently pulling the buckle over his shoulder.

"Just a weird dream," she said, tightening the leather strap. It whined a bit under the strain before settling at Luke's shoulder.

"You seem to be getting a lot of those lately."

She rubbed her forehead. Sweat beaded against the pads of her fingers, and she frowned deeply. Ever since they had come back from Tatooine, she had felt strange. Maybe it was finding her home ransacked and half burnt to the sand, or maybe it was the notes Ben had left behind for her, or maybe it was seeing her aunt and uncle again. She could not place it.

She, Luke, and Han had gone to Tatooine to retrieve Beru and Owen Lars. Most of their trip was spent in the Darklighter's spartan home on the outskirts of Anchorhead, where Leia and Luke sat in a dusty parlor while Biggs's parents cried. Han had been elsewhere, on account of return trips to Tatooine being rare as they were, and his particular connection to the galaxy's seedy underbelly.

"Either you go and pay Jabba back the minute we land," Leia had told him fiercely, jabbing him in the chest with her forefinger, "or you can forget about coming back."

Leia didn't like the idea that the man who her life seemed to hinge on more and more often had explicit ties to Jabba, and a life on Tatooine that she so badly wanted to sever. Without Biggs, and now with Owen and Beru safely relocated, she was finally free of that wretched planet. No more sun-scorched afternoons, lazing in dunes and catching heat waves in her hands. No more climbing hard-edged canyons, collecting bones, racing at dawn. No more twirling against the current of sand, bowing beneath the weight of Ben's last hit, lightsabers hissing above the low hum of desert sounds, sand skittering and distant lizards croaking. Blue swords glowing at sunset, red as blood and casting shadows beneath their feet.

Not going back was the only decision. It was the only way forward.

"Is it the Force?" Luke asked her. He tilted his head to the side, so she could adjust the brown woolen cowl around his neck. It pooled over his tight white turtleneck like dunes.

When Luke had told her that he was Force sensitive, she had been ecstatic, but unsurprised. Leia could feel him sometimes, but only just barely. He was more like an ever present hum in the network of the universe, like air or sand or sunlight on Tatooine, than a noteworthy point in the Force. He never used it, and hardly spoke of it. When she had offered to teach him, he declined. When Ahsoka offered him a lightsaber, he shook his head mutely. So she simply forgot about it.

"Yes." Leia felt his gaze on her face, and she wanted to ask him about it more than ever. Why he cut himself off from the Force. Why he was so determined  _not_  to be a Jedi. "I just have a bad feeling about this. Can't you feel it?"

Luke's wide blue eyes watched her curiously. Even shut away from the Force, his presence was so open and free that it sometimes baffled her. She looked into his eyes, and she knew he was an honest man. Han didn't believe her when she said so, because he had been a politician and a prince, but it was true.

"I don't think so," he said. He shot her a small, sheepish smile, and rested his hands on his knees. "But you're so much better at this stuff than me, Leia. You've just got better instincts."

"That's not true."

Luke glanced at her pointedly. He didn't want to say what was on his mind, that she had had formal Jedi training that he could never have, but that wasn't her fault. He kept quiet, not willing to start another fight, but Leia was itching to spark this argument again.

"We'll be at Cymoon 1 soon," he said to her, rising to his feet and slinging his helmet over his face. He looked down at her through the small slit where his blue eyes still shone like beacons. "You should get ready."

And with that, he disappeared into the cockpit of the shuttle. Leia frowned as he went, toying absently with the chain that held her holodisc. She pulled it out from beneath her shirt and set it down in her palm. The holoprojector flickered into life, and she stared at her own small, exuberant face, jaw slackened and eyes glittering as she pressed her cheek to the gray whiskers of Ben Kenobi's chin. Her arms were loose around his shoulders, and his eyes were closed as a contented smile stretched his wizened cheeks.

She didn't know how to get over this. If she would ever get over this.

Somehow seeing Qui-Gon Jinn in her dream made everything worse.

Like Death was taunting her. Waving its impermanence before her eyes and then snatching away all hope she had with a snap of its fingers and the peeling back of her eyelids.

The holoprojector's image fell away, and she slipped the disc back beneath the folds of her shirt. She had to keep moving forward, no matter what the cost. She had to keep up her training with Ahsoka, so that the next time she saw Vader she could kill him.

When she had made her intentions known to her fill-in master, she had told Leia to leave that to her.

"Don't you worry about Vader," she had said, her voice soft and yet so full of bitterness that it made Leia stare. "When the time comes, I will take care of him— and I do not want you or Luke anywhere  _near_  him, do you understand me?"

"Yes, Ahsoka," Leia had lied.

Now she tugged on a dusty uniform that had been stolen from a guard of Jabba's. She'd had to patch the blaster bolt hole herself, but it wasn't such an awful fix. Her aunt would probably look unfavorably upon it, but an Imperial would not know the difference between her handiwork and that of a real guard of Jabba's.

Leia slipped into the cockpit and noted that they had already dropped out of hyperspace. She leaned against the back of Han's chair while Luke braced himself against the wall. She dropped her helmet onto her head as an Imperial line demanded clearance codes from them. Han sent them and waited.

"I know I say this with every idea you have," Han said dully, "but  _damn_ , I don't think this is going to work."

"It was your idea to use Jabba as our in, Han," Luke pointed out. "Now you don't think we can do it?"

Han exhaled in a puff of breath when they were cleared for landing. He eased the yoke of the battered shuttle downwards, and Leia tipped forward uneasily. Her chest pressed against his back, and her chin bumped against his head.

"I just wanna be realistic about our chances," Han said. The shuttle leveled out beneath them, and Leia allowed her chin to linger against the crown of his head for a moment before she stepped back.

"Our chances are fine," she said. "As long as we stick to the plan, we'll be  _fine_."

Luke watched her, the blue of his eyes visible even beneath the shadow of his helmet, and she could tell he was incredulous but willingly optimistic.

Would it be easier if he would join her in training? She knew his duties in the Rebellion were plentiful and obviously incredibly important, but wasn't rebuilding the Jedi order important as well? Their numbers kept dwindling, and Leia was afraid to admit that she knew she could not carry on the tradition on her own.

It was a horrifying feeling, to be cornered into a fate she felt inadequate fulfilling. If she became the last Jedi alive, did that mean she had to teach an entire generation to make up for what Ben had lost?

It was too much responsibility. She didn't want to think about it.

Their shuttle landed rather bumpily on the platform of Weapons Factory Alpha. Leia felt for her lightsabers beneath her armor instinctively. Ahsoka had offered to teach her to use both of them in battle, but every time she tried to use Ben's lightsaber she felt overcome by her loss and her anger, and she could not keep a clear head. So she had simply declined.

"Time to head out, sunshine," Han chirped, clapping her on the head and Luke on the back as he climbed out of the pilot's chair and brushed past them. "If we die, I blame you."

"You say that every time we have a mission, Han," Leia muttered.

"Because, in the event that it does happen, it will be your fault."

"Guys," Luke hissed, "now is  _not_  the time."

Leia bit back a harsh remark, and stared forward as Han smoothed his hair back and relaxed his shoulders. The shuttle's blast doors creaked open, rust causing them to scream mildly as they slid on their tracks. She and Luke picked up the long axes customary for a pair of Jabba's guards. They shared a brief glance before facing forward, preparing for the Imperial welcome.

The man standing on the platform was, as most Imperial officers tended to be, unremarkable. He was middle-aged, with a square jaw and a permanent frown. He stood rigidly as Han sauntered down the ramp toward him.

"Greetings in the name of the Emperor," the man said. "He thanks you for joining us here today and hopes our negotiations prove swift and fruitful. I am Overseer Aggadeen. And whom do I have the honor of addressing?"

Han stepped off the platform, his gait easy as he lifted his chin high, and replied in a haughty voice. "The official emissary of his High Exaltedness, the Illustrious Jabba the Great, Mightiest of All Hutts, Master of Tatooine and Grand Warlord of the Outer Rim." He stopped several feet before Aggadeen, his hip cocking to the side as he leaned back to watch the Imperial officer and his troops through his lashes. "But you can call me Han."

Leia bit her tongue to keep from laughing as Han grasped the Overseers hand and began to spout some nonsense that was probably a loose version of the truth to the unsuspecting man. Face to face, hand to hand with an Imperial officer made it clear how heavy his drawl dictated his speech. Leia found herself self-conscious of her own slow, humble cadence.

She did not allow herself to react when they were told to relinquish their weapons. Her lightsabers were heavy against her thighs beneath the heavy brown wool of her tunic, and she understood that if they were found there, the trouble it would cause would be insurmountable. The whole mission would slip from their fingertips, and they'd be lucky to get off planet on that shambling rust-pile of a shuttle that they had intercepted.

 _But they're only scanning for blasters_ , she thought.  _Nobody will expect me to have lightsabers smuggled under my armor._

Han lifted his blaster and brandished it loosely. His smile was easy and incredibly suspicious. "No guns," he said, setting the blaster aside. "Makes sense."

Beside her, Luke turned his face away and murmured into the comm inside his helmet, "Heading in. Hold your positions."

The reply was almost instantaneous, the soft flutter of Threepio's relief inside their ears. " _Thank the Maker! I was half-expecting them to shoot you on sight. The subterfuge must actually be working—!"_

Threepio was cut off by the tranquil tones of a soft, feminine voice.

" _I want to know immediately if something goes wrong,_ " said Ahsoka Tano. " _There's no point in me hiding if you've all been caught._ "

Leia met Luke's eye, and she noted how guilty he looked. He cut his gaze away sharply and followed Han into the facility.

Ahsoka had not been assigned this mission, but she had demanded to come. Leia did not know why, but she understood that the Togruta was fiercely overprotective of Luke, and consistently fearful of what might happen to Leia when left alone. Once, Leia had offhandedly called Ahsoka paranoid, and Luke had gotten incredibly defensive, snapping at her for perhaps the first and last time, and quickly excusing himself. Later he had apologized, and they went on like nothing had happened. She felt like she was missing something.

Anyway, like Chewie, Ahsoka was too noticeable to take part in the infiltration of Cymoon 1. Instead she stayed with Threepio in the  _Falcon_ , waiting for a call for reinforcements. Leia understood why she was particularly unhappy with this situation. Ahsoka Tano was a well-seasoned warrior. She had been fighting wars since before Leia had been born! Being demoted to watchdog was probably a less than satisfactory ordeal.

They were ushered into the factory, the sound of machinery whirring noisily nearly drowning out Han's cool voice as he held up his role in the whole farce.

"Hope you boys are prepared for some vigorous negotiating," he said, raising his voice so it could be heard over the din. Leia watched mechanical arms reach in peculiar angles to meld together durasteel plates. The sparks of heat that radiated from all sides cast them all in a faint blue glow. "If you think Ol' Jabba is tough to bargain with, well, who do you think taught him all that?"

Leia pressed her lips together and hoped none of the surrounding stormtroopers saw her roll her eyes. He really knew how to lay it on thick for a performance.

Aggadeen's voice was dull and semantic, and when he spoke, his words sounded slippery, like they were well oiled and manufactured to ease right through one ear and out the other.

"It appears you have some misconceptions about what will happen here today, Mr. Solo." The man's eyes flickered, colorless and lacking so much as a spark of light as he turned and gazed at Han. "There will be no bargaining."

Leia's fingertips tingled. Were they already at a stalemate? Should she attack? It was difficult to gauge the situation as Aggadeen began to deliver the terms, that there was no negotiaton, and that the Empire's terms were what they would comply with. She was rigid, waiting for the sign to attack even while Luke eyed her warningly. It was a firm look, even behind the shadow of his helmet, that said  _not yet_.

Han smirked as he observed the Overseer. "You must be really desperate," he said, tipping his head back and gazing around the facility with feigned interest, "if you're out here trying to employ somebody like Jabba as your supplier. I suppose having a ship the size of the Death Star blow up in your faces… tends to run your resources a bit dry, am I right, Aggie?"

Biting back a laugh, Leia focused on the conference room ahead of them. It was a pale, sanitized hole in the wall that seemed to reflect the whites of her eyes. The door looked heavy.

Aggadeen cleared his throat, and he gestured to the door. "The negotiator will arrive shortly. You will await him within."

The impatience brewing within her, steadily rising inside her throat and coiling up her muscles, forced her to speak.

"Waiting?" She could not hold back a smirk as every head in the room snapped in her direction. Luke's eyes were glued to her cheek, desperate and yet unsurprised. "Us? I think you've got the wrong idea, Mr. Overseer, sir."

Aggadeen's lifeless gaze fell upon her, his face unwavering and unremarkable. "I don't believe anyone addressed you," he said. He turned his attention back to Han.

"I don't believe I need to be addressed," Leia replied, her voice clipped and level. Han lifted his shoulders and offered up a shrug, as though her outburst might as well happen, and he looked Aggadeen in the eye.

"I believe the lady's grown tired of listening to you," he said. "So, as there are no negotiations to be had, we'll just do what we came here to do. Artoo!"

Their droid, who had followed them almost completely unnoticed into the facility, popped open a compartment and began oozing a pungent green liquid across the floor. Leia unbuckled her armor so it loosened up at her sides, and she slipped her arms out of her tunic and lifted it up so it gathered in a pile of fabric around her neck. She did not see Han's face when he spoke again, baffled, trying to understand what Artoo was doing. As she tore away her disguise, casting the armor and the beige wool into the air, the stormtroopers around them who had the misfortune of stepping into the oil were zapped by a nasty charge.

Leia did not hesitate as she dove into the nearest trooper, one hand on their chest and the other on their helmet as she slammed them into a wall. Luke was at her back, delivering a steady kick to the stormtrooper's breastplate and knocking him into the remaining trooper with a steady blow to the head.

While Han took care of the last trooper, elbowing him in the face, Aggadeen stammered in shock. "What… what kind of envoys  _are_  you…?

Han retrieved a blaster from a fallen trooper and pointed it in the Overseer's face. He smirked, seeming entirely too cocky as Luke tore off his helmet and cast it aside.

"The rebellious kind," Han said, sounding entirely too pleased with himself. "Which way to the main power core?"

After some tough persuasion, Aggadeen pointed them in the right direction. Leia decidedly delivered a punch to his jaw, and thanked him kindly.

Luke stripped out of his armor and woolen tunic as they ran. Beneath it, he wore a simple white, high collared shirt that fit his arms and chest snugly. His trousers were also white, and around his waist was a thick white scarf that he fashioned into a cloak as they moved. It hung heavily over one shoulder.

"That could have gone worse," she remarked.

"It also could have gone better," Han said. They glared at one another while Luke charged forward, wrist comm at his lips. "What were you thinking? Going off book like that?"

"We weren't playing with scripts, Han," she said. "It's perfectly reasonable that I was sick of acting, and decided to move things along!"

"We're in," Luke said, striding forward expertly, as though he had been born in these halls. "Move to Phase Two."

Han jogged up behind Luke, and bent over him to yell into the comm. "Threepio! My ship better be as good as when I left her!"

" _Calm down, Captain,_ " Ahsoka said coolly. " _Your ship is fine. Please worry more about yourselves and leave the getaway to me._ "

"You be careful too, 'Soka," Luke said softly. "We stick to the plan. Okay? No unnecessary risks."

" _The whole plan is an unnecessary risk."_

"Yeah, but, like…" Luke smiled, and he let a nervous little laugh fall from his lips. "No more than usual, right?"

" _I_ _ **guess**_." Ahsoka's grudging reply was sarcastic and gentle. There was laughter in her voice. " _Just be careful, kay? You too, Captain. Skygal. May the Force be with you._ "

Leia did her best not to flinch at the nickname. It was what Biggs used to call her, and Ahsoka had taken to it without explanation. There was no good way to tell her to stop, so Leia just endured it.

They slipped inside the central power station, peering up that the massive structure and taking in the immensity of their assignment for a moment before they got to work. Leia rushed to the control panel, tearing open the touch-pad and tearing the wax from wire with her teeth. Artoo had already plugged in to the computers and disabled the security system. Leia bound the wires in her hands together, tying them in a tight knot and moving on.

"How's it going, Leia?" Han drifted over her shoulder, taking a glance at her handiwork. She did not so much as glance at him as she replaced the touch-pad, clicking it back into place.

"Done," she said. Artoo whistled behind her, and she turned to look at him. Her eyes roved around the room briefly before her heart sunk. "Where's Luke?"

Han peered at her bemusedly, and he turned his head from side to side before whirling around. His shoulders stiffened, and he gaped as his eyes flickered around the empty chamber.

"Luke!" he cried. Leia snatched his arm and clamped her hand over his mouth, staring up into his eyes and watching them flash wide with fierce worry.

"Shut up," she hissed. "We don't want stormtroopers flooding in, do we?"

Han blinked, and he huffed when she released him, wiping his mouth rather dramatically. "I thought you had good instincts, princess," he spat. "Where the hell were they when Luke decided to go AWOL?"

"He's fine." Leia stiffened. He had to be fine. Wouldn't she have felt it if he weren't? She bit her lower lip and whirled away from Han, dropping down to her knees and closing her eyes.

"Now is  _not_  the time for—!"

"Shh!" Leia clamped her hands on her knees and focused inwards. Ben had always taught her that the Force was not something that hid itself— what wanted to be known would make itself known. It was alive and humming all around her. She just needed to let it in.

Had she really been shielding so much that she had not noticed the startling plea rebounding through the Force?

Her eyes snapped open, strangled, hopeless cries rising up in her head all at once like bile.

_Help us! Help us! Help us!_

Had Luke heard it too? Leia had to consider him, his big, earnest blue eyes, and his noncommittal laugh when she offered out Ben's lightsaber.

" _I'm not the person you want wielding that, Master Jedi,"_  he'd joked, pushing the lightsaber back to her.

She had always assumed, because of his insistence and his disinterest in learning the Jedi way that he was not powerful in the ways of the Force. She felt him, sure, like a warm and radiant light, but she had never found that odd. She had never thought that he had been squandering his potential, shying away from all offers to learn more about his power.

Now she wondered. Had Luke been more in tune with the suffering squirming beneath the Force on Cymoon 1 than she had?

Leia jumped to her feet. Han watched her from several feet away, his eyes wary and clearly worried. When she had said that Luke was fine, he had not believed her. Even though she knew it. Even though she was absolutely right.

"Keep going," Leia said, pulling her hair from the messy knot at the back of her head and shaking it out. It fell steadily to her shoulders. "Make sure this reactor is inoperable. I want it to blow, and I don't want a soul in this world to stop it."

Following her gut, she left him where he stood and slipped out a door at the far side of the central power station. It led down a flight of stairs and into a dark, cavernous passage. Leia could hear the beginnings of a scuffle, boots squeaking against durasteel and a blaster bolt colliding off the ceiling. She unclipped her lightsaber and leapt down five steps at once, landing in a crouch between Luke and a rather heavy set guard brandishing a golden whip.

The guard's eyes flashed wide momentarily at her sudden appearance, the whip hissing through the air and missing her face by an inch. She flicked her lightsaber, coiling the golden tail around the length of the blue blade, and tearing it from the man's hands. The glowing gold filament snapped like a cord, hissing its last breath before falling uselessly to the ground.

Luke wasted no time in lifting his stolen blaster and putting a hole in the center of the man's brown leather doublet.

Without waiting for the guard's body to hit the ground, Leia whirled around and slashed the padlock on the cage behind Luke with her lightsaber, listening to the metal spit and crash noisily as it cracked in half. She wrenched the door open, swinging it hard so it crashed on against the side of the cage, and rattled the whole structure. Within it, several men and women of all different species flinched, while others inched closer to the opening, watching her with varying degrees of caution.

"It's okay," Leia said softly. She extinguished her blade, and she clipped it to her belt. "You can come out. It's okay."

She offered her arm and helped a few unsteady Twi'leks down from the perch the cage was set at. Behind her, Luke shouldered his blaster and observed the slaves with a sad, knowing gaze.

"My name is Luke Organa," he said, his voice clear and beckoning, like a bell in a high tower.  _Come with me_ , it said.  _I can show you the sky._  "I'm here with the Rebel Alliance. Anyone who hates the Empire… follow me."

An array of whispers fluttered up from the depths of the group. Then, a tired looking Zabrak stepped forward. He met Leia's eye as he passed by her, and then looked to Luke. He nodded. Luke nodded back.

He led the charge up the stairs, Leia at his heels. They did not speak, or even really look at each other, but Leia saw his shoulders slump when her gaze flickered to his back, and she wondered if he was ashamed to be connected to the Force. Ashamed that she knew that he was so innately tied to it.

When the entered the main power center, Han glanced up from where Leia had left him, stationed at a tall reactor. He looked amused before his dark eyes fell upon the small army of slaves behind them.

"Oh," he said, his voice dull and disbelieving, "kriff, you've gotta be  _joking_."

"Afraid not, Han," Luke said brightly, striding forward and waving his gun toward the door. "Okay, so we're working on blowing this place sky high. I refuse to have any of you caught in the blast, so I recommend you get out."

"We should get them to Ahsoka and Threepio," Leia suggested.

Luke nodded, his eyes brightening. "You're right," he said, whirling to face Han. "Are we done here? Will the station blow?"

"I mean, it  _should_." Han sounded a bit skeptical as he spoke, and as if he heard his own weary voice, he shook his head and spoke again more certainly. "Actually, yeah. It will. We're gonna see fireworks, kids."

"Good." Luke turned back to the slaves, and he smiled. "Let's go. We have a ship parked not far from here."

"You don't have to join the Rebellion," Leia said quickly, watching a few faces crumple in relief at her words. "Once we get out of here, I'm sure we can arrange to have you sent back to your homes. But if you want to stay and fight… well, we're here."

"We're here, and we're staying," Luke said.

They were all quiet, eyes glassy and mouths open in a daze. Leia had met enough slaves that she understood that they had been abused and neglected for so long that they were not even completely sure that this was actually happening. There was nothing she could do to help that, but she passed off the remaining confiscated guns to the two nearest slaves. They took them readily.

Han plucked up his sleeve, leaning close to his wrist comm, and he started toward the exit. "Threepio, Tano… get the  _Falcon_  in the air. Chewie, stand by to clear that roof as soon as we give the signal. Then the  _Falcon_  swoops in to pick us up, we hit the hyperdrive, and we're out before this whole thing blows."

"Sounds perfect," Leia said, beaming up between Han and Luke. Han looked at her with narrowed eyes, suspicion laced within his frown. Luke merely smiled back at her, leaning his blaster close to his cheek as he peered out into the hall. She continued, her voice still unreasonably cheery. "I have a really bad feeling about this."

"Of course you do," Han said, drawing his hand over his face while Chewie howled from the comm. His hand dropped abruptly, his shoulders tensed up. "A  _ship_? What do you mean, a ship?"

"A ship's coming?" Leia gasped, holding Han's arm and leaning over his bicep. "Or is it going?"

"I don't know. Chewie?"

Luke was strangely silent as Chewie roared again. Leia shot a worried look back at the slaves. She wasn't sure how many of them spoke Basic, and she didn't want to frighten them.

"An incoming ship," Han muttered. "Okay, okay… that could be anyone. Right?"

Behind her, she heard boots scrape heavily against the floor. She turned and saw Luke backing away slowly. His mouth was buried in his scarf, and his head was shifting from side to side, shaking methodically, as if saying  _no, no, no._  But he did not speak.

Leia drifted closer to him, her hands raised as though she were approaching a wild animal. "Luke?" she uttered, her voice half far away, as though she were listening to it through the comm on Han's wrist. "What's wrong?"

For a moment, she saw through his shields, and an intense and overwhelming flood of grief fell into her mouth and filled up her lungs. She froze in shock, her mouth falling open and her head feeling ready to tip off her shoulders. If she had been alone, she might have screamed.

And then it all stopped cut off like a bottle being corked. Luke tugged the scarf down from his mouth and strode forward, brushing past Leia and stepping up beside Han just as Chewie began to howl.

" _Vader_?" Han blurted, his face draining as he looked forward dazedly. Then his gaze slid to Leia.

For a moment, she felt like she was drifting. Like her soul had been yanked from her body, and she was a kite attached to the earth by a single thread. She wanted everything to snap and fold and let her fly free.

She lurched forward and snatched Han's wrist. His skin was warm and callused, and his fist weighed against her small hands.

"Shoot him," she said breathlessly. Her mouth was dry and her mind was reeling. Nothing made sense, nothing had meaning, and there was nothing but Leia and Vader and the whole world— and the world was not big enough for them both. "If you have the shot,  _end it_!"

" _No!_ " Both Luke and another voice, the stark and level sound of Ahsoka Tano that split across the comm in a rasp seemed to cry at once. Leia met Luke's eye, and she saw that he looked, in that moment, absolutely terrified.

Han's eyes flickered between Leia and Luke in mute horror, his wrist turned upwards toward his face. He glanced down at his wrist, and he closed his eyes with a small, slow exhale.

"Chewie," he said. "Stand down. You can't take a shot at Darth Vader, you— you just  _can't_."

"Are you kidding?" Leia reeled back, her fingers tightening on his forearm and her nails puncturing his skin. "Are you  _crazy_? It's Vader!"

"The whole facility will be on alert!" Han barked back at her, standing up straight so he managed to cast a long shadow over her. He allowed her to clutch his arm, and his eyes showed no malice or spite— only guilt and pity. That made her hate him genuinely, if only for a few seconds. "I know you've got a death wish, darling, but some of us want to live!"

"Your life is not the only life on the line here, Leia," Luke said, his voice sharp and stern like a disappointed parent's. "You can be as self-sacrificing as you want, but you have to know when to draw the line!"

"Killing Vader is worth it!" she hissed. She did not look at the slaves behind her, her heart filled with unbridled fury and despair. She had not asked them how they felt about dying in exchange for the death of the Emperor's favorite attack dog. For a brief, awful minute, she didn't even care. She felt sick and she felt vindicated.

" _Leia!_ " Ahsoka snapped, her voice biting through the comm and crackling in the air like lightning. It shocked her, and combatted the rage within her with a startling pool of icy guilt. " _A shot could never kill Vader, no matter how skilled Chewbacca is. He'll merely deflect it with the Force. Imagine how easily you could achieve such a feat. Vader has_ _ **decades**_ _on you, and one meager blaster bolt? You think that will do anything? You're so much smarter than that, Leia, use your head and think!_ "

Leia's anger subsided, and it left a dull ache in the pit of her stomach, like hunger pangs.

"But…" She released Han's arm. Her fingers left white imprints on his skin, and they flushed red as the blood flooded back into his muscle. "We have to do something. I can't sit idly while my father's killer, Ben's killer— he's  _here,_  and I can end it!"

There was a moment where Han looked at her, and she thought there was an understanding. Like for the first time he saw her as an equal, and not some waif he'd plucked from the sands of Tatooine. He knew she was capable, but she knew he had no idea what she was capable of.

What she was willing to do.

And then there was Luke. She could not even look at him, but she felt his gaze, and the disappointment that lingered there was like baking under the Tatooine suns at high noon. She felt like her skin was shriveling and peeling by the heat of his eyes.

But Luke had no power over her. Nobody did.

It was Ahsoka's voice that caused her pause. This woman had seen things that Leia could not properly conceive. Her voice fell like sunrays, drifting in the air and encompassing every available surface, leaving everything soft and aglow with a warm white light.

" _Revenge_ ," she said, " _is not the Jedi way_."

She stood, her head bowed, and her heart thudding in her chest. Ahsoka did not sound angry or sad or even disappointed as Luke was. There was an underlying layer of understanding to her tone that shook Leia to her core. As if Ahsoka understood every thread of negative feelings vibrating rhythmically in her chest, like a bastard's viol. It was so easy to forget that Ahsoka was not a Jedi. It was harder, perhaps, to remember that Leia was supposed to be one.

Her jaw jumped. Her heart sunk.

"You're right," she said, her voice low and defeated. "It isn't."

She heard Luke exhale beside her in relief.

Somehow it was so much easier to hurt him when she knew she was right.

She wasted no time as she spoke, loudly so Ahsoka and Chewie could hear through the comm.

"However," she said sharply, "Ben taught me that the Jedi are servants to the people. We must do our best in order to preserve peace in the galaxy. Therefore, Vader must die. And I am going to kill him."

"Leia!" Luke cried, catching her hand as she marched toward the door. His fingers were cool and soft, grasping her wrist and staring into her eyes imploringly. She only met them in order to shoot a small, useless apology into the Force.

Then she wrenched her hand away, and darted down the corridor.

When she had woken up from her vision of Qui-Gon, she'd felt deep in her gut that this mission would not go as planned. There had been a reason he had come to her, and she knew this was it. Vader was here, and he would test her dedication to becoming a Jedi.

It wasn't just about revenge, though she couldn't deny that revenge was a rather large part of it. In her heart, she felt that revenge and justice were twin swords. One could not swing without the other following. She had no qualms with vengeance, so long as the vengeance was just.

And for this, it was. It had to be.

She found herself drifting down an empty corridor. Her footsteps were slow, and her eyes trailed from one wall to another, as though Vader would materialize out of the durasteel panels. Her fingers inched toward her lightsaber steadily, her feet gliding against the floor. She felt Vader's presence like a gale wind blowing out several thousand candles at once.

Inside her head, a sudden and distant voice called out.

 _Leia_ …

She froze, her fingers brushing her saber. Her throat nearly closed up completely, but she forced herself to remain calm. She collected herself, inhaling shakily and starting forward once more.

"Ben…?" She glanced around her, finding nothing but grayscale metal walls and floors, and feeling overwhelmed by a sense of loss. "Ben, if you can hear me, I'm  _sorry_. I know this isn't what you wanted. But this is what I need to do."

Ben's voice filled her head again just as she unhooked her lightsaber.

 _Leia,_ he said.  _I love you, and I want you to listen to me very carefully. Run._

If Ben were really here, she'd whirl around to face him and shoot him a glare. But she'd probably leave, as she had when Maul had come to Tatooine.

But Ben was not here.

It was only her, the glow of her lightsaber, and the approaching shadow at the other end of the corridor.

His approach was marked by the heavy rhythm of his footsteps. He did not move fast, but he moved efficiently, his movements clipped and deliberate as though articulated planned months ahead. Accompanying the heavy footfalls was the sound of his rattling breaths. Her whole body felt cold and detached, like she was suspended in space without a suit.

She swallowed hard, and drew her lightsaber up with both hands. Her elbows were bent as she leveled the hilt with her cheek, the blue blade pointing outwards toward Vader. She could hear the hum of it. Vader continued to approach, his lightsaber hissing as it extended toward the floor and filled the far side of the hall with an unearthly red glow.

Leia, in her disgust and grief, took her left hand from her hilt, holding it tight so the saber stayed level with her face, and she shot her arm out straight. She pointed two fingers at Vader and lowered her chin.

That made him pause.

She watched his feet. One foot halted mid-step. The other scraped against the floor.

"You were Obi-Wan's apprentice."

He spoke slowly. His voice was astonishingly deep. While his respirator hissed, his voice boomed. She felt small all of a sudden, and she never felt small.

She lowered her chin. With both her fingers and the end of her lightsaber pointed at him, it should have been easy to feel confident. But right now she felt like a fool.

Vader waited. She watched him with a fierce glare. Did he expect a response?

After a few heartbeats of silence, filled with the unsteady rhythm of his breathing, he spoke again.

"He misled you, child," he said. His tone was unexpectedly, simultaneously, very soft and very bitter at once. "Whatever he promised you, I can assure you. It is impossible."

She cocked her head slightly, raising her eyes to him and allowing a smirk to pull at her lips.

"We'll see about that," she said.

They stood. They stared. Neither of them moved.

"You would be wise to lower your weapon and come with me peacefully," Vader said. His grip on his lightsaber visibly tightened. "You are no Jedi. I will only kill you if you are as foolish and obstinate as your old Master."

"Lucky me," she said, her voice slicing through her teeth. "I am ten times the obstinate fool that Obi-Wan Kenobi was. Now come and  _get_  me, you coward!"

But Vader did not move.

Her heartbeat was accelerating to the point that it drowned out the hum of her lightsaber in her ears. The heavy hilt of her lightsaber, which had been made for hands far bigger than her own, was starting to slip against the bandages she'd applied that morning to her fists. A cold sweat had broken out across her forehead and lower back.

What the hell was he waiting for?

"Who  _are_  you?" he said suddenly.

Her heart ached. Her eyes watered.

"Come  _fight_  me!" she cried, her voice wavering ever so slightly. "What are you waiting for? Why are you asking me so many damn questions? You killed Ben! You killed my father!"

"I have killed many fathers," Vader said, his deep voice dry and dull. "You will have to be more specific."

Leia could not wait any longer. Form III was primarily defensive, and she had been anticipating him coming at her with all of the force he had applied when he had struck her on the Death Star. But now he was waiting. He was cautious. He was fucking  _curious_ , and it made her so angry that she darted forward, gripping her saber with both hands, and lunged at him.

He caught her strike with ease, red and blue blades clashing and spitting wildly as they collided. She lurched back, and blocked a blow that came from her left, easing her weight into it and glaring up into Vader's helmet.

"How can you not remember something like that?" she spat. "I knew you were a monster, but really? Look at me! I'm sure you can figure it out!"

That caused him to shove an incredible amount of strength against her, forcing her to stumble back, nearly toppling onto the floor. She caught herself on one hand and flipped back onto her feet before readying herself into a defensive position.

"I don't know you," Vader said simply. "I don't know who your father was. And though your attempt at saberwork is passable, you must understand that if you continue, you will die."

She let out a small, strangled shout of frustration before springing forward again. He blocked her attack, attempting to shove her back again with his immense strength, but she unlocked their blades and ducked beneath his arm, swinging low toward his legs. He whirled, narrowly catching her lightsaber and standing for a moment with his head lowered. He watched her.

Her skin seemed to crawl.

This is the man who had tortured Luke. This was the man who was responsible for Alderaan's destruction.

This was the man who had ruined everything.

She remembered Ben's teachings. He had always told her never to try to take down an opponent with brute force, because she would lose. Instead, she had to use her size to her advantage.

So she flicked her wrist and backed away, her heels hitting a wall. She jumped, kicking off the wall and springing forward, her blade whirling against the air. Vader blocked her, and she pushed off his blade before he could catch her in the air, flipping over his head and landing in a crouch behind him. She made another stab at his legs, and he turned sharply and kicked her in the stomach.

The air in her lungs was knocked from her mouth as her stomach seemed to cave in on itself. She went flying into a wall, and she spat bile onto the floor as she rolled onto her knees.

"I do not know what you expected," Vader told her coldly, "but I am not a patient man. Nor am I a merciful one. Do you think I am letting you live out of amusement? I want to know who you are, and I want you to come with me."

She couldn't speak. Her chest seemed arrested, bound by chains as she coughed. She held her lightsaber loosely as she struggled back to her feet, one arm around her belly while the other extended her lightsaber shakily, its point directed at Vader's chest.

"You—" she finally managed to choke. "You  _what_ —?"

Vader merely stared at her. His mask, as unexpressive and solid as it was, almost seemed to melt in the odd purple light of their lightsabers.

"You are not without potential," he said. "You know when to strike, how to strike, and can hold your own against me, if not briefly. But you will get better. I could make you better."

Her mouth fell open.

For a moment, her mind seemed frozen.

And then, unbidden, she burst into a fit of laughter.

She held her stomach, every laugh a jolt of pain through her abdomen, and she laughed at him. She pointed her lightsaber at him, and she kept laughing.

"You—!" She shook her head, a disbelieving grin parting her face "You think I'd join you? After what you've done? Ha!"

Vader merely watched. He seemed to be good at watching.

"This is too much," she gasped, straightening up. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck and began to curl around her cheeks. "You're too much."

Vader lifted his lightsaber. "Or you can die," he said. "Whatever you choose, attempt to be dignified about it."

"Someone in this room has to be," she retorted thoughtlessly, "and we both know that is not you."

Vader neither agreed nor disagreed. It was the most despicable thing, she thought, that he could let her rot in her curiosity while he went on and on and on. The roundabout game they were playing was tiresome. Leia wanted him dead, and Vader wanted an answer. This was not what she had been expecting. Not in the slightest.

"Why are you just standing there?" she snapped, lifting her hilt closer to her cheek once more and edging closer. "I won't come with you, and I refuse to die!"

For the first time, Vader attacked first. He sprung forward with a shocking amount of agility, his red blade sailing beneath her arm, narrowly missing a ligament that would have severed the arm at the elbow. She twisted to block his next swing, a quick redirection that caught her lightsaber too close to the hilt. The ungodly heat of the blade grazed her fingers, and she could not keep hold of it one-handed.

Vader flicked his wrist, and the hilt flew from her fingers.

She didn't shout, or gasp, or even move beyond reaching vainly for her lightsaber. This all felt so familiar, like she'd walked these steps and played this part a hundred times. Like she was living a waking dream, and the moves she made were choreographed by fate.

How many times had Ben flicked her lightsaber from her hands identically to how Vader just had?

How many times had he chided her for getting too comfortable in a fight— too cocky, too sure. She should never believe herself to be capable of dispatching her opponent. Always be aware of her own faults.

Leia swallowed hard.

Vader stood, a blood red blade in one fist and a sky blue blade in the other, and he held them both with the certainty of a man who knew them intimately, who had studied them for many years.

"I could sense you," he said. A chill ran down her spine. He had  _sensed_  her? All of her work shielding with Ben— she had spent days in a trance while shielding her presence from Maul at Ben's behest. And Vader had sensed her the moment he'd stepped onto Cymoon 1? "Your anger. Your hatred. It hangs in the Force around you like tattered, charred flesh. Did you think I would not follow your bloodlust?"

"I don't care," she said breathlessly. "I don't care what you think you felt from me."

"Perhaps you should." Vader lowered his head, and his red tinted eyes found hers. It was unnerving. She like there were mites beneath her skin. "I will tell you this, girl, and you would be wise to heed my words. If you expect fulfillment from killing me, you are far from the grace of Light, and you will never be a Jedi."

"Shut up!" She unclipped Ben's lightsaber from her belt and pushed forward. Vader crossed the blue and red blades, and her lightsaber caught them in the middle. She pushed as hard as she could with her muscles.

She refused to tap into the Force. Not for this.

For this, she knew better.

"You are too willful," Vader hissed, "too  _volatile_  to be a Jedi. You come here, you face me, you are outmatched, and yet you keep fighting. Why?"

"Because you killed my father!" Leia cried. She pushed off the lightsabers, and she whirled around, dashing toward Vader's side. Her cut was low, and he blocked her with his red saber. He held her blue one loosely in his hand. "Because you killed Ben! Because you destroyed Alderaan! Why wouldn't I fight you? Don't you know what you are?"

"I am a Sith Lord," Vader replied, his voice rumbling so low she felt it shake the floor. "I cannot pretend to be anything more or less. You, however, are a phony."

"No I'm not!" She flicked her saber up at his chest, and ducked his parry, roving around him as he turned slowly to match her pace. "I know exactly who and what I am. Nobody, certainly not  _you_ , can change that!"

"I have killed enough self-proclaimed Jedi to know that is not true."

Unable to manage a proper response, she let out a strangled cry of anger and frustration, and she swung at him with both hands. Vader caught her strike, and used both lightsabers to shove her back. She went skidding, her knees giving out and forcing her to tumble onto her side. Her lightsaber clattered beside her, and went out.

"I have had enough of your childish tantrum," Vader said. "Tell me who the rebel who destroyed the Death Star is."

Leia fumbled for her lightsaber, and she bit back a gasp when it skittered from beneath her fingers and flew down the hall. She sat on her hands and knees, blinking up at Vader in shock for a moment before her gaze set in pure defiance.

"And if I don't?" she challenged him, pushing up onto one knee and glaring at him.

"Then you can join your father."

"Far preferable than joining you," she hissed. She moved into a crouch, and weighed her options. He had two lightsabers, and she currently had none.

The terrifying thing about this was that Leia knew she was good. She  _knew_  she had talent with a lightsaber.

Vader was just so much better.

"So be it," Vader said, the weight of his tone falling upon her shoulders. He had crossed his arms, both lightsabers humming madly in his fists as he prepared to strike her down. Leia poised herself to run. She knew where she needed to jump to get the trajectory she was looking for. She knew how much force she would have to use, and how much of the Force to apply to her jump. She was ready.

Then Vader paused.

He had looked down at her lightsaber. He seemed, suddenly, absolutely transfixed.

He looked at her again. Then at his lightsaber.

"This… this weapon… I know it." He sounded different just then. Something in his deep, commanding tone, wavered. He stared at it for a long moment, before his head snapped toward her. "What is your name?"

Leia lifted her chin up high. She looked up at him, and she felt the weight of the Force around her, like smoke gathering and threatening to asphyxiate them both.

She opened her mouth, and the ceiling above them collapsed.

Durasteel screamed and debris flew in every direction.

A giant leaden foot of an AT-ST Walker came barreling toward them. Leia leapt up, kicking off the wall and using the Force to shoot her through the falling sheet metal and beams toward her fallen lightsaber. She made an abrupt landing, skidding onto her knees and ducking in order to avoid a falling rail.

Vader had whirled to face her. Among the smoke and debris, the two lightsabers glowed eerily. They watched each other, him from afar and her from a crouch.

From a speaker on the Walker, a familiar voice rang out. A massive metal leg cut between her and Vader.

" _Sorry, princess,"_  Han gasped, " _best if you watch yourself. This thing handles like a drunken bantha._ "

"Han!" Leia was both thrilled and terrified to hear his voice. Panic trickled through her as she twisted to look up at the Walker. Then she was forced to duck, a blaster bolt flying past her head. "Damn it, Han!"

She darted toward the nearest stormtrooper who had begun to flood the busted corridor, dodged another bolt, and snatched him by the arm. She flung him over her head and threw him to the ground, tearing his blaster away and shooting blindly at the nearest troopers. She felt them with the Force, and let her bolts hit home.

" _A thank you?"_ Han all but cried, his voice heightening in disbelief. " _Would? Suffice? I just saved your life, sweetheart!_ "

"Not now, Han!" Leia backed up and shot a trooper to her left. She swerved and hit another, and then another, and then another. She felt them coming, and shot them without looking. This was methodical, easy, and monotonous work. When one got too close, she kicked him in the helmet, and knocked him into a wall.

Three troopers at once tried to corner her. She lifted her blaster and fired at the first, swerving without looking to be sure the shot hit, and aimed for the second. Without warning, all three of them were thrown off their feet and scattered into different directions. They toppled over each other several hundred feet away.

Leia blinked, and she backpedaled as Vader marched toward her, his cape sailing behind him and his lightsabers floating above his fists. He was not even bothering to hold them as he stalked forward, his head lowered and his footsteps only drowned out by the creaking of the Walker.

Instinctively, she began to shoot at him, but the bolts shied away from his broad shoulders, shooting into nearby troopers and slicing through them like butter. The gun in her hands was torn from her fingers and thrown aside.

She stepped back. And then she stumbled. She reeled backwards until her spine hit a wall, and she scrambled for an exit, her hands grazing the cool surface. When she looked up, a shadow had drawn over her, and Vader loomed.

He reached out, and Leia tried not to flinch.

Instead of gripping her neck, he snatched her chin between his fingers. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, holding her breath. When the sting of a white-hot blade on her throat did not come, she opened them again.

He was staring at her. His respirator rattled as he clutched her chin. His gloved fingers bit into her skin. She recognized the feeling. It felt like Ahsoka's metal hand beneath her glove, squeezing Leia's fingers assuringly. The hand that Vader had cut off.

She gathered spittle and phlegm at the back of her throat, and she spat into his helmet.

It landed on the left side and trickled down. He did not even bother to wipe it as he shifted her head from side to side, peering closer and closer until she could practically feel his helmet against her nose. She did not breathe.

Finally, he spoke again, and when he did, his voice was alarmingly mild.

"Your name," he said.

She felt the heat of the lightsabers floating at his sides.

"What is your name?"

Her mouth was dry.

"Tell me."

 _It's a trick,_  she thought.

"Who are you?"

She was going to die anyway. She might as well die pissing him off.

"I'm the rebel," she said. Her voice was surprisingly firm, if not a bit breathless and small. "I'm the rebel pilot that destroyed the Death Star."

Vader's grip on her chin tightened for a moment, before it slackened again very suddenly.

His respirator hissed in the silence as they watched each other.

"That," he said, "is not what I asked."

What the hell did he want from her?

Leia's eyes widened as her lightsaber, which had been floating precariously at Vader's side, was torn away from him. It sailed through the air and disappeared behind him.

She nearly crumpled in relief when he released her and whirled around.

"Vader."

Leia slipped out from Vader's shadow and darted away, putting as much distance as she could between the two of them. She turned, her feet twirling against the ground, and she skidded to a stop as she watched Luke approach slowly. His white scarf, made of heavy velvet, trailed after him as though it were as light as silk. He set himself between them, inching closer to Leia as he backed up and Vader came closer.

Leia noticed the glint of silver in both his hands.

Her eyes widened in alarm and amazement.

Luke now held not only her own lightsaber, but Ben's as well.

"Luke!" she gasped, unable to keep the sheer relief from her voice.

He did not turn to look at her. He did not even move. He merely stood and stared at Vader.

"Organa," Vader hissed. A wave of dark, trembling rage hit her all at once. "You are in my way."

Luke stared at Vader. He shifted his feet, and Leia recognized the position as he bent his knees and slid forward into a defensive stance. He held both hilts upright for a moment, before twirling them in his hands until they were reversed.

They burst into life, thin lines of blue lights sliding out from either side of his fists.

"You come any closer," Luke said, "and I swear, Vader. You will regret it."

Vader had paused to take in his stance. The way he held the blinding blue lightsabers in a reverse grip. How one served as a guard while the other was pointed outwards, ready for an attack.

Recognition, then, flowed over the rage in the Force, ice cold and devastating.

"You betray your Master, Prince," Vader said in a low, bitter tone.

Luke did not react. He did not even move.

Vader turned his head upwards. His shoulders rose and fell.

"I sense her," he said slowly. A chill shuddered through her. "She's near."

"Leave her out of this," Luke hissed.

"You made her a part of this four years ago," Vader said, stepping forward and pointing his saber at Luke. "I asked you who your Master was, and you refused to answer me."

"I didn't know what you meant!" Luke struggled to contain a desperate waver in his voice, his pitch heightening as he leaned forward. "Why is it so hard for you to understand that I was a child? I knew nothing!"

"A traitor's child," Vader said. "You were running your little mercy missions long before I intervened."

"Regardless," Luke sighed, "your issue is with me."

"Yes."

Luke raised his head. His hair curled along his ears as he tilted his head.

"Well?" He lifted his fists, and locked his position. "Let's get this over with."

His eyes slid to her. He drew back his left hand, the hand holding her lightsaber. Wordlessly, she understood the gesture, and she raised her hand. His fingers opened, and her lightsaber fell from his fist and flew through the air, landing steadily in her own. While he adjusted his stance to accommodate his single saber, she stepped up beside him and pointed her blade at Vader. She locked herself back into Ben's old stance, two fingers rising in the air.

Vader's head lowered as he observed them. He held his lightsaber in one hand, and did not approach.

Luke pushed off the ground faster than Leia expected, darting forward and springing low. Leia decided to jump, kicking off a dead stormtrooper and leaping into the air, going high while Luke shot toward the ground. Vader blocked her strike, red and blue lightsabers hissing as they collided, and he stepped back to avoid the swipe of Luke's blade.

Without missing a beat, Leia dove aside and slashed at Vader's back. Luke covered her at Vader's side, his blade curving in a blinding arc as he dipped low and avoided a hit by sliding one leg out and bending his knee. Leia recognized the way he moved, the reliance on crouching low to the ground and springing up fast, slashing in smooth reverse arcs as typical movements Ahsoka would make. It was clear from the way he bent his limbs and swung his blade that Ahsoka had taught him everything he knew.

Somehow, Vader knew when each blow was coming. Leia moved fast, taking each swing like it was her last and flicking her blade up, over, down, slashing and twirling and pushing Vader back while he stepped and blocked and ducked another downward swipe by Luke's hand. He managed to hold them both off, even as they breathlessly, ceaselessly, bombarded him with everything they had. Luke was pulling moves out of thin air, switching from Ataru to Soresu even while keeping his reverse grip, and then switching back as though it were nothing. Ben would be absolutely furious.

But Luke was switching forms mid-battle, and he wasn't dead yet. Why couldn't Leia?

She held her lightsaber with both her hands, and she drew it over her head. She charged, taking sweeping steps as she crashed her lightsaber down, aiming for Vader's breastplate and meeting his lightsaber instead, as expected. They crackled and spat as they met, his blade quivering as she pushed hard. He pushed back, and she skidded away, looping back around and delivering a fierce barrage of blows without pausing to think or to block.

Vader locked her blade once more, and he leaned forward as she weighed herself against his heavy grip. He seemed to loom over her, and his helmet glowed purplish in the dual light of their blades.

"Did Obi-Wan teach you Djem So?" he asked, his voice as heavy as the weight of his lightsaber. "That is difficult for me to believe."

He broke off from their locked stance to block another hit from Luke, moving fast to flick his blade once, twice, thrice. Leia pushed forward, swinging her blade and hissing through her teeth when he caught her, red on blue, red on blue, onwards toward eternity.

Luke stumbled, and Leia screamed when Vader's massive fist came swinging down and whacked Luke across the face. He went flying, his body colliding against the floor and rolling into a metal sheet.

Unable to reach him without first confronting Vader, she slashed at him wildly, half a shout in her mouth, her heart in her throat, and she watched red and blue lines dance over her eyes. She was using the Force primarily now to save her. It guided her lightsaber as she batted away any strike that came her way, and flung herself forward, moving without thought and trying to catch a good look at Luke over Vader's shoulder.

Vader kicked her in the chest, and the ground rose up to smash into her spine and connect with the back of her skull. She coughed, and that hurt, her body curling up and her lungs burning as she attempted to push herself upright.

Her breath caught inside her throat as a raw, inexplicable heat came dangerously close to her throat. Vader's lightsaber hovered just beneath her chin, and she thought that the point of it might actually leave a burn on her skin.

From beyond the hazy red glow of the lightsaber, Vader's mask tilted.

"You are beaten," he said.

She swallowed hard. Her fingers tightened on her lightsaber, and she wondered if she could slip out from under him before he lobbed her head off. It was unlikely, she knew, unless she had a distraction.

Vader lifted his head suddenly, and Leia rolled onto her side as he flung his saber up to block two blinding white lightsabers that had come crashing down above him. Leia gaped, sitting half-upright and holding her throbbing ribs as Ahsoka Tano bounced back, her body moving in a smooth arc as she flipped around Vader. Her boots kicked easily off his shoulders, and her white sabers made rhythmic semi-circles in the air. She blocked a horrifying, vicious strike, and slid back onto her feet with her body crouched and her fingers grazing the floor.

Leia scrambled up, clutching Luke's arm as he came to her aid. They leaned against each other heavily, lightsabers loose in their hands, and they watched Ahsoka seem to defy gravity as she curved her lightsabers around her and spun in mid-air. Even with the Force keeping her up, she had an oddly aerodynamic movement that put physics to shame. Her blades collided with Vader's, swiping up and whipping away the moment they collided before striking again.

"Holy…" Leia managed to choke out. Luke nodded mutely.

The rapid fire strikes came and went, and the steady rasp of lightsabers colliding filled the room. Han had halted the Walker, and was likely watching the fight from the air in awe. Ahsoka was beating Vader back, forcing him to backpedal as she delivered quick, vicious blows with her reverse grip laying the arc of her blade in an elegant curvature. She did not seem to need to stop to even breathe as she continued her swift and deliberate attacks, rounding about and sliding easily from one position to another.

After countless blows pushed back and forth, Ahsoka's twin lightsabers locked in a cross as Vader struck in a harsh downward arc. They stopped for a moment to stare at one another.

"This was…" Vader's low voice boomed as he drew out a long pause, leaning closer to peer at Ahsoka. "Unexpected."

"I'll bet," Ahsoka hissed. She pushed her weight against her sabers and forced Vader to reel back. She whipped around to look at Luke and Leia, her blue eyes shining with fear. " _Go_!"

"What?" Luke said faintly.

"Ahsoka, we can't just—!" Leia began, and then cut herself off with a gasp as Vader bore down on Ahsoka again, forcing her to block him with her sabers crossed behind her back. She buckled under the weight.

"This is familiar." Vader's voice rumbled. It sounded like thunder in the desert, a storm of restless sand riddled with lightning. "Must you always play the hero?"

Ahsoka's mouth fell open in half a snarl, her teeth bared as she gripped her sabers and bore the brunt of his weight. She flicked them up and dove aside, narrowly missing Vader's saber as it sliced right through the metal floor.

In her low crouch, one lighsaber poised behind her back, and the other braced close to her cheek, she tilted her head.

"I learned from the best," she said bitterly.

Vader swept toward her and swung at her hard, beating her back steadily with three swift hits in a startling succession. Ahsoka stumbled back, and caught him once more in a deadlock, her biceps flexed as she planted her feet firmly and leaned into her block heavily.

There was a heavy din overhead. A distant wail of the facility's alarm seemed to have caught up with them, and more troopers had appeared in the doorway and in the remnants of the holding center for AT-STs. Luke flicked his wrist and blocked two blaster bolts that came zooming at them from the side. His reverse grip seemed made to redirect those types of shots, his eyes never moving from Vader and Ahsoka.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, and lifted his wrist to his mouth. "Hey, Chewie," he said. He sounded hoarse and breathless. "Threepio. Please tell me the reactor is still set to blow."

Over the line, Chewie yowled. Leia tried to move forward, but her a cold fire was ablaze in her chest, and she nearly toppled over from the blinding shock of pain that ran through her left side when she took a step. Luke caught her, and she hissed.

"I'm fine," she managed to spit through her teeth. Luke stared at her with wide eyes, and he shook his head.

"No," he gasped, "you're  _not._ "

They both ducked reflexively as several blaster shots rang around them, a quick succession of  _pew-pew-pew_ close enough to their heads that they both had their lightsabers at the ready. Three nearby stormtroopers fell to the ground.

"What," a familiar voice drawled from behind her, "the hell is going on down here?"

Leia all but collapsed in relief as she twisted, with some difficulty, to stare at Han. He smirked at her, and then his face fell as he quickly began to shoot again, his head bobbing in a slightly incredulous shake.

"The shit you get us in, princess," he muttered.

"Han," Luke gasped, "we have to get out of here. Once our little friend blows…"

"Yeah, yeah!" Han winced, lifting his blaster and stretching it between the two of them. He shot two men in one breath. "Chewie said he's on it. He made it back to the  _Falcon_  after Jedi  _No-Brain_  here ran off, and is coming to pick us up."

"No-Brain? Really?" Leia hissed as Luke caught her around the waist so she didn't physically assault Han. "You want to go? I had the situation under control until you  _brought down the roof_ , Han!"

"You did not!"

"At least there weren't any stormtroopers!"

Han's mouth fell open, his expression twisting in clear offense. He shot a trooper to the left of him while holding up his free hand.

"Um," he said, " _what_? Sweetheart, fifty— no, a  _hundred_  stormtroopers is more preferable to the average sentient lifeform than one Darth Vader."

"Yeah, well," Leia huffed, "you brought me a hundred stormtroopers  _plus_  one Darth Vader. Do the math, hotshot."

"Enough!" Luke flicked his blade, and rebounded another stray blaster shot. He rounded on them, never faltering in his support of Leia as he shot them both a fierce glare. "Both of you! I can't think with your bickering."

Han stepped back, perhaps alarmed at Luke's angry eyes, or perhaps stunned that he was being yelled at. Either way, his eyebrows shot up, and his mouth remained shut.

Luke turned his attention toward Vader and Ahsoka. Leia watched his fist clench around the hilt of Ben's old lightsaber.

She touched his shoulder.

When he looked down at her, she saw the fear glistening in her eyes. She  _felt_  it. The Force sang with a familiar feeling of desolation. The kind she was familiar with.

The kind she had felt when she had watched Vader cut through Ben.

So she gingerly stuck her lightsaber into his hand. She pushed herself upright, and let go of him. It took an immense amount of effort to keep her face schooled, the pain stinging her whole body, and she smiled at him.

"Go," she whispered.

Luke stared at her, and the warmth of his shock and appreciation fell over her like dawn. His eyes lit up as he nodded, and he turned away.

"What—?" Han gasped, reaching out as Luke bolted toward Vader and Ahsoka. "Wait! Luke, no!"

"He can do it," Leia murmured. She took Han's arm, and hobbled closer to him. He looked down at her in alarm. "The Force is with him."

"I don't care about that!" Han jerked his gun toward Vader wildly. "I care that he's about to go start some  _shit_. Chewie's on his way! We gotta go!"

"It's fine!" Leia insisted. "He'll be fine!"

"He's not you," Han said fiercely. "He's not… look, Leia, I don't even like seeing you go all Jedi Knight on people! You know how scary that is? You've got absolutely no idea how dangerous that is!"

"Of course I do!" Leia would have shoved him if she were not using him as a crutch. "Don't you think I know exactly how dangerous my whole existence is? Han, look at where we're standing! Darth Vader is approximately twenty feet away from us, and we're somehow still alive. Think about it."

"I don't want to." Han exhaled very shakily, and he shook his head. "I just wanna go. Is that too much to ask? We did what we came here to do, and now—"

His voice fell short as he watched Luke flip over Vader's head and land at Ahsoka's side. They both adopted a twin stance, crouched low with their two lightsabers held firmly in a reverse grip.

"Damn," he remarked.

"I told you," Leia murmured.

"Did Ahsoka really teach him all that?" Han looked bemused. Then his face seemed to light up in understanding. "Oh  _that's_  what he meant when he said she was his tutor!"

"You really are as dumb as you look, huh?" Leia couldn't help but smirk fondly up at him. His cheeks actually got a hint of color at that remark.

"Hey!" He jerked a finger in her face. "You ain't exactly a genius either, honey."

"Uh huh."

Luke and Ahsoka managed to effectively beat Vader back. Luke's attacks were slower and less refined, and his dual wielding was sloppy in comparison to Ahsoka's neat precision. Her left and right arms swished and dipped, and her white lightsabers moved as gracefully as if they were merely extensions of her muscles.

Han had picked her up a gun, and now they were crossing the debris-riddled field of battle, shooting wildly as they hobbled toward the exit. The sound of a ship's propulsion system roared overhead. Beside her, Han smiled dopily in relief.

"There she is," he half-yelled.

"For once I'm glad to see her," Leia admitted. Han beamed at her, and she actually shoved him this time, gripping a fallen support beam as she strained herself to keep upright. She clutched her bad side, and turned back to peer at Luke, Ahsoka, and Vader.

The  _Falcon_ landed before them, and Han helped her up the extended ramp. The stopped for a moment to look back.

"Guys!" Leia shouted. Only Luke looked back. "Come on! Let's go!"

Leia watched in dawning horror as Ahsoka caught one of Vader's strike's and held it, her eyes flickering from Leia to Luke. The look in her eyes was something she recognized.

"No!" Leia cried, lurching forward and tripping. Her breath was short, and she coughed on her way down to her knees. Han shouted loudly in her ear as he caught her, picking her up very gingerly and cradling her in his arms. "Ow— damn it, Han, lemme go!"

"Stop squirming—!" Han hissed, as she elbowed him. "Stop—!"

Luke cried out, and Leia craned her neck to see what had happened. Luke was flying through the air, landing unsteadily onto his knees in the dust at the base of the ramp. Not too far away, Ahsoka stood, one arm holding a block with the other was raised.

She had used the Force to push him away.

Like Ben had done with her.

"No," she choked, "no, no, no…"

Luke scrambled to his feet and lurched forward. Han dropped her— or at least set her down rather roughly on the ramp, and dashed down after him.

"Han!" Leia clapped her hand over her head, one arm slung around her busted ribs. Breathing was becoming increasingly difficult, and there were spots at the edges of her vision. "Han, stop! Please, we can't just leave her!"

Luke was struggling against Han, his lightsabers extinguished in his fists. He paused only to look up and stare across the field of debris at Ahsoka.

Then, with the sudden finality of defeat, he slumped against Han.

"Luke?" Leia choked as Han led him up the ramp. His head was bowed. "Luke? Wait…"

Luke met her gaze. There were tears glistening inside his eyes, and they made them shine like glass.

So Leia swallowed hard as she clamped her mouth shut. She pushed herself shakily to her feet, and shot one last desperate glance over at Ahsoka. But she had turned away and pushed back Vader once more.

Han took her arm carefully, and she leaned into him as she dragged herself into the  _Falcon._


	2. bend and break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and!!! that's a wrap on this one. i've been working a whole lot but i'm gonna try and get as much done on the empire story as i can (i have not started it yet.. whoops). a lot of people were expecting vader's pov, and that would have been cool, but i stuck with ahsoka's. whoops. maybe we'll see his pov again later?
> 
> enjoy!

The moment the hatch of the  _Millennium Falcon_ closed, she exhaled a breath of pure relief. Finally Luke and Leia were gone. She no longer felt any anxiety about Vader getting his hands on them, or maybe saying too much. Particularly in front of Leia.

Ahsoka had still been trying to sort out that part. The part about telling her.

Now was not the time or place, however.

Vader pushed off her lightsaber, and he stepped back.

"You are very foolish," he said.

Ahsoka swallowed hard, and she nodded. She had thought this through, briefly, while she'd been rushing to Leia's aid after realizing what she was planning. The chance that she would die was incredibly high, but she had been willing to risk it if it meant getting Leia and Luke, the future of the Force, out of here.

She closed her eyes, and she extinguished her lightsabers.

There was a stiff jolt of shock through the Force. Even through Vader's shields.

"What are you doing?" he asked, his suspicion cold in his tone.

Ahsoka opened her eyes, and she held out her hands.

"I'm surrendering," she said. "Arrest me."

Vader stood frozen before her, clearly suspecting a trick. Stormtroopers had gathered around them steadily, and at once they took aim. Ahsoka's heart might have beat a little faster at the thought of death twenty years ago, but right now, she embraced it.

"Well?" she asked, tilting her head. She found herself smiling, a lopsided smirk that she had often reserved for private jokes with Anakin. "What do you say? Want a challenge?"

That caught his attention. He stared her down for a long moment, before lifting his hand sharply. Ahsoka watched as every gun facing her was lifted upright.

She tried not to wince when her lightsabers were whisked away. Vader approached her slowly. For a brief moment, he stood before her in silence, one of her lightsabers igniting in his fist. One half of him was cast in a strangely soft white glow while the other was bathed in a blood-like light.

Ahsoka jerked a bit, biting her tongue to keep from shouting as Vader circled her abruptly, carving through the necks of the ring of stormtroopers surrounding them until helmets were rolling all around her. She stood stiffly, eyeing her former master carefully as he snapped the necks of the remaining troopers with a flick of his wrists.

She exhaled when he let the lightsabers go out and clipped them to his belt. He turned to face her, and grabbed her by the arm.

"Now," he said, "we go."

"Don't you want to watch the fireworks?" Ahsoka asked innocently.

Vader's shoulders stooped for a short moment, as though he was considering her words. And then he whirled around, taking a meager step toward the facility just as the whole building erupted. Flames shot to the heavens as durasteel structures came grinding apart, collapsing in on itself in a grand ball of fire.

Even as his grip on her bicep tightened painfully, she couldn't help but smirk. They'd done it. Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Artoo, and Threepio weren't here to see it, but they'd done it.

She did not allow herself to feel fear as he rounded on his heel to face her.

"What have you done?" he spat.

"What have  _you_  done?" Ahsoka shot back, flourishing her free hand at the decapitated troopers at her feet. "At least my actions have been entire in character. You know my reasons for wanting this factory destroyed, and you know that I have experience doing it. But killing these stormtroopers? Not something I expect the Emperor will be fond of."

"We are leaving," Vader hissed, dragging her by the arm like a petulant child and leading her away from the smoldering wreckage. His steps were wide and brisk, and Ahsoka found it difficult to keep up. It had been ages since she'd had trouble keeping up with anyone.

She felt small again. Like a Padawan on Geonosis.

"You're not even going to restrain me?" she asked as he left her standing in the middle of the hold of his personal yacht while he strode toward the cockpit.

"Did you have somewhere to be?" he retorted. His voice was different— low and booming like distant thunder. But the tone was the same.

 _Don't get snippy with me,_  she nearly said.

Ahsoka folded her arms across her chest. She followed Vader into the cockpit.

"No," he said.

"What?"

"No." He pointed behind him. He didn't even look at her.

"I can't sit with you?" Ahsoke sneered at him. "Really? Do I  _embarrass_ you?"

"I would advise you to keep your mouth shut."

"I think you know me a little better than that," Ahsoka said dryly, taking the seat to Vader's left and buckling in.

There was a heartbeat of silence, and then half a heartbeat of listening to Vader's unsteady respirator hiss.

"Do I?" he asked. He sounded bitter. Ahsoka sunk in her seat.

She knew she'd regret this. She already did, in a way. But it was for the best, wasn't it, that it was her here rather than Leia?

Ahsoka had heard the girl swear that she would kill Vader enough times that she truly believed Leia would kill him if she was strong enough. If she was given the chance. And Ahsoka was not ready to let Leia kill her own father.

Besides, Ahsoka wanted some answers.

Once they were in hyperspace, Vader rounded on her. She unbuckled her seatbelt and looked up at him expectantly.

"I want names," he said.

"And I want my Master back," she said, her eyes narrowing. "I guess we both better get used to disappointment."

He jerked a finger in her face, and it hovered over her cheek for a moment before he clenched his fist.

"I am not a patient nor a forgiving person," he said. "I do not want to use force, but do not test me, Apprentice."

Ahsoka stared at him. She chewed on the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. The stump of her arm seemed to throb as she remembered exactly how she had lost it. She still could not tell if it had been a moment of great mercy or great cruelty.

"Okay," she said. She stood up and moved into the hold. "I'll be back here, whenever you decide you want to torture me.  _Master_."

She allowed every last drop of sarcasm she had inside her to bleed into her voice. Her eyes slid to his disdainfully, and she sunk into a kneeling position as she found some sense of tranquility inside her, and began to meditate.

* * *

Once they arrived on Mustafar, Ahsoka was thrown into a cell. She couldn't help but remembering her own voice, thin and firm as she spoke to Bail Organa.

 _Mustafar is where Jedi go to die_.

She looked around the bleak, windowless cell, and she looked over at Vader with her brow arched.

"Couldn't have given me a room with a view, huh?"

Vader stood in the doorway, a bleak shadow that made the already desolate prison cell even dimmer. He did not step forward, nor did he move away.

"I want names," he said.

"So it begins," Ahsoka muttered. She dropped onto the meager bench provided, understanding that this shelf would be her bed from now until, in all probability, her death. She had slept in worse places.

"A compilation of the names of Rebel Command, and its hierarchy," Vader said.

"Not happening," Ahsoka replied, dropping her chin in her hands and smiling grimly. "Even if you torture me, I will  _never_  tell you what you want to know."

"But," Vader hissed, his voice rumbling and rippling through her like a tsunami, "I will settle for one."

"One?" Ahsoka frowned, leaning her back against the cool durasteel wall. She had seen enough of Vader's fortress to make her rethink a lot of things she thought she had known about her former master. There was no doubt in her mind that he would torture her. He had tortured Luke.

 _No,_  she thought firmly.  _I can't think about Luke right now._

Her suspicion of Luke Organa's lineage had started when he'd been young. The first time it had flitted through her brain was when he had been twelve, and he'd been dragged back into the palace by a disgruntled guard, wearing battered peasant rags stained heavily with engine grease. His arms and face were smeared black, and his hair was in a disheveled mop on his head. When asked why he had run away, he had peered up at Ahsoka with earnest blue eyes, and he said, "I didn't run away, Fulcrum. I just wanted to help."

It only got worse as time went on. By the time Luke had saved her from Malachor, she began to think her theory was more of a fact. And then she began training him with a lightsaber, and spending time around the Naberries— Ahsoka had not known Padmé had been pregnant when she died until Sola had mentioned it offhandedly. By then, Ahsoka was nearly  _certain_.

And then Leia showed up.

Now she was not so sure.

Regardless, it seemed to her that Luke was safe from Vader's suspicion. He'd known the boy long enough that if he'd ever suspected, he would have said something.

Leia was going to be trouble, though. She looked too much like Padmé, and she used Anakin's name.

"Enlighten me," Ahsoka said quietly. "What is it that you want?"

Vader swept into her cell, and the door slid closed behind him. Ahsoka considered standing when his shadow fell over her, but she did not think that was a smart idea. Not that any of her ideas today had been smart.

"The girl," he said. Ahsoka's jaw clenched, and she tried to keep her face completely blank. For a moment Vader studied her reaction, before he continued. "You know the one. The girl who destroyed the Death Star. What is her name?"

Ahsoka licked her lips. Then she rolled her shoulders back, and she smiled up at Vader vacantly.

"Oh,  _darn_  it," Ahsoka said, cupping her chin and tilting her head back. "What  _was_  that girl's name?"

Her feet suddenly scraped against the floor as she was lifted painfully by her neck, her throat stretching and aching as her body twitched feebly. Vader slammed her back into the wall, and Ahsoka winced as her third lekku was squished between the durasteel and her spine.

"Do not play games with me," Vader spat. Ahsoka bit down on the inside of her lip, and she glared at him. She hoped he could feel how disgusted he was. The bond between them was a limp, severed cord, and it felt unreasonably similar to the phantom feeling of her missing arm. "You think you are protecting her, but I swear to you, the only person you are hurting is yourself."

"Always was a bit of a masochist," Ahsoka hissed, her voice thin and garbled from the pressure Vader put on her windpipe.

There was an astonishing, white-hot spike of pure rage that filled the room up like a grenade popping open and consuming the whole cell. She found herself disintegrating inside it, the raw heat charring her to the bone and then blasting the charcoal remains away. She felt like she had become dust merely struggling here, between Vader's fist and a wall.

A sudden rush of pain shot through her arm, her artificial nerves bursting and spewing thick black liquid along her side and splattering against the wall and the inside of Vader's fist. White dots played across her vision as she listened to the metal screech inside his hand, artificial bones bending and wires sparking frantically as they were exposed to the air. There was a sickening  _pop_ , and a grinding whine as though a joint had been dislocated. Her prosthetic arm was now dangling above her, bent and misshapen, and removed forcibly from the port that connected it to her nervous system.

Sweat had gathered on her chest and her neck and her forehead. She found herself slackened against Vader's grip, her chin falling against his hand as she breathed heavily. The fact that she was even conscious was a miracle. Every molecule in her body seemed to be trembling, and her eyes were wet from unshed tears. It had happened too fast for her body to really process it, but now she was in shock, and the empty space where her hand had been was like her whole side had been buried in a glacier.

"You will get this back," Vader said, sounding far away and mechanical, "when you decide to cooperate."

Her dropped her, and her body smacked against the bench, toppling over in a graceless heap. She was a ragdoll, and her limbs refused to work. She struggled to find her voice, and it scraped against her throat in a low moan. By the time she could even form words, Vader was gone.

Ahsoka slid to the floor, flesh fingers moving shakily to the port near her elbow where her prosthetic attached to her skin. The numbness was beginning to subside, and now it throbbed as painfully as it had when Vader had cut it off the first time.

It was still so hard to reconcile the Anakin of her memories with the monster of the present. Vader was not her Master. They had nothing in common. Ahsoka had heard Anakin's voice shuddering from within Vader's busted mask, and she still could not quite believe it.

Sometimes she played Anakin's voice over in her head.

 _I would never let anyone hurt you, Ahsoka…_ _ **never**_.

She covered her face in her remaining hand, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

* * *

A little over a month later, according to the scratchings on her wall she had made with a piece of metal casing that had fallen off her prosthetic, Ahsoka was paid another visit.

This was the first time she was seeing Vader since he had stolen her arm, and frankly she could have gone a little longer. Her time in solitude was a non-event. She was not tortured regularly, she was not interrogated by random Imperial officers, and the only person she could sense at any given time was the guard outside her door. And even that person tended to change bi-weekly.

Her food was delivered through a slat in the door, and it was better than she expected of prison food. Probably because this fortress was not your run of the mill Imperial gulag. She was, in all likelihood, the only prisoner on Mustafar.

In her spare time, she trained her body. She meditated, she did one-handed pushups, she went through katas, and she meditated some more. The last thing she needed was to go mad from isolation.

She had been in the middle of eating, lounging back on her bench and tearing the stringy meat of some poor lizard creature off the bone. At first she had almost been touched that Vader had remembered her unique dietary habits— Togrutas needed meat, or a specially marked protein stick, in order to survive. But then she realized she was giving him too much credit. He wanted her alive and healthy, or else he would have been torturing her for information.

The fact that he had not tortured any answers out of her weighed on her mind heavily.

When the door slid open, Ahsoka dropped the bone she was holding and leapt to her feet. Her heart choked her as she caught sight of his helmet while he stooped to enter, his cape trailing behind him.

For a moment he paused to take in the sight of her. Armless, underfed, and clothed in the black and gray fatigues of an Inquisitor. The lines on her lekku looked more and more discolored and scraggly in the dim light the cell provided.

"Are you here to give me back my hand?" she said, after realizing that waiting for him to speak was a mistake.

He turned away sharply. Ahsoka stood and watched as he paced her cell, his legs sweeping from one side to the other. He halted and stared forward, absolutely still, and his respirator filled the silence with an uneasy hiss.

"My daughter," he said.

Ahsoka's whole body went cold.

She lowered herself onto her bench, and she swallowed hard.

Vader's head snapped to her face, and she did her best to sit up straight under his stare. She could not—  _would_  not shrink under Vader's scrutiny.

"Would you like to know how I found out?" he hissed.

Ahsoka inhaled sharply through her nose. She exhaled, and she smiled up at him ruefully.

"I expect you're going to tell me," she said.

His rage was duller than it had been a month before, but it still hit her hard. She braced herself for it, and still she buckled, her shoulders flinching up to her ears. When he stepped toward her, she felt like she was falling from a high altitude, and there was no parachute, no cushion, and no Force.

"A  _bounty hunter_  told me." His fists clenched at his sides, and Ahsoka closed her eyes. "I found out I had a child from a bounty hunter. A  _grown_  child!"

"Why is that my problem, again?" she asked dully.

She jumped as his fist crashed into the wall of her cell. It left a dent as he stooped forward, his low voice spitting at her coldly.

"You knew. You knew all this time. Twenty years, Ahsoka. How different things might be, if you had told me."

At that, her breath hitched in her throat. Her eyes flitted from the ground up to his mask, and back again. It was difficult to make sense of what he was saying, but she gathered that one, he believed that she had known about Leia from the very beginning, and two, he was implying that… what? He might not be Vader if he had known about Leia?

That was hard to believe.

"First of all," Ahsoka breathed, holding up her hand, "no? I don't know where you are getting your information, but I've only known for a few months."

"Long enough to tell me."

"Oh," Ahsoka said, resting her chin on her fist and smiling up at him ruefully, "so you could hunt her down and terrorize her some more? No thanks."

Vader's footsteps were heavy as he approached her, stooping down and hissing in her face. "I would  _never_  hurt my daughter."

"Just like you would never hurt me?" Ahsoka spat.

It was as if she had pried the lightsaber from his hip and run him through with it. That was the reaction she got from merely speaking. His step back was wide and long, and he hunched for a moment, his breath rattling even with the respirator.

"That," he said, "is not fair."

" _Fair_?" Ahsoka stared up at him with wide, incredulous eyes. She found herself actually gaping at him, shooting him a puzzled look that seemed to visually question his sanity. "Um, are we going there? Really? Okay, fine." She pushed herself to her feet, and she glared at him in disgust. "You want to talk about unfair? Why don't we start with you turning your back on everyone who ever loved you, and destroying  _everything_!"

"You were the one who turned your back first, Ahsoka," Vader hissed. "Do not act so high and mighty when you abandoned me first."

"I didn't abandon you!" Ahsoka could hear the strain in her voice as tears, angry and desperate, clawed their way into her eyes. "I would have done anything for you!"

"And yet," he said coolly, "you weren't there. So do not pretend like you understand the things you speak of. You were not  _there_ , Ahsoka."

"If I were there, would you be like this?" she gasped, taking a sharp step forward. He stepped back, as though she were poisonous. It took her a moment to comprehend the gesture, and it hurt more and more just standing here. "Anakin, if you need to blame me for you to grasp how monstrous you've become, I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is you being absolutely blind to the horror you've wrought!"

"I am not blind!" Vader turned sharply, pivoting on his heel and giving her a cold shoulder. "The galaxy fears me. I am a symbol for a violent, oppressive regime." He tilted his mask toward her ever so slightly, and his rumbling voice grew colder and quieter. "Yes, Ahsoka. I know how monstrous I am. But what is a wonder to me, is that you cannot see that this is who I have always been."

"What?" she breathed.

She listened to his respirator. It was a rhythm, she realized, and not a comforting one. She wondered how many Jedi had listened to the eerie sound of artificial lungs sucking and spitting air as the last thing they ever heard.

"I have always been capable of great evil," Vader said. "I have always been willing to do the hard thing, if it suited me. If it suited my ideals, whatever ideals I was trying on at the time. I was foolish, in my youth. I am stronger now. I am better now."

"Oh,  _kriff_ ," Ahsoka moaned, holding her head for a moment before letting it roll back. "You sound like a lunatic. Well, maybe you've always been a little bit of a lunatic, but never like this. Don't you dare try and convince me that somewhere deep inside you, you were  _this_  all along." She made a wide, sweeping gesture of Vader's stocky form.

"It is the truth."

"Why don't we talk about your daughter?" Ahsoka suggested in a faux-cheerful tone. Vader's shoulders shot up, and he turned to face her fully. Expectantly. "Why don't we start with the fact that she hates your guts, and will kill you, probably, once she has more experience with a lightsaber?"

"That is Obi-Wan's doing," Vader spat. "He filled her head with lies."

"If what she's told me is true," Ahsoka said, her voice chilly and thin, "then the only lie Obi-Wan ever told her was that you were dead. I think he thought he was protecting her, because she has this perfect vision of her father in her head, and frankly, you're a real let down."

"He told her  _what_?"

The whole cell seemed to tremble. Ahsoka witnessed her own bench, which was bolted to the durasteel wall, quiver and quake beneath the stress of Vader's rage. She looked up at him, and she remained unimpressed.

"You might as well have been dead," she said coldly. "You should thank Obi-Wan for doing his best to help raise her in your absence. She's a wonderful person— truly gifted and empathetic and kind. Padmé would have been proud of her."

His shoulders squared up, and his whole body went visibly rigid at the mention of Padmé. Ahsoka founder herself breathless, reeling in the cold air of pure, unadulterated grief. It was not something Ahsoka had ever felt before. This type of pain came swiftly, like a raging storm, and it clouded over her thickly. She was lost in it for a moment, lost in the anguish and desolation, before she was yanked back to reality by Vader's cool, bitter tone.

"You're wrong," he hissed. "Obi-Wan  _stole_  her from me."

Ahsoka stood, feeling like she might fall over at any given moment due to his wild projections of anger and sorrow. She could not keep up.

For a moment, she actually believed him. There was only a brief flicker of doubt before she rationalized that she could not blame Obi-Wan if this were true. But then she thought about it, and she peered up into Vader's mask.

"How do you know that for sure?" she asked very cautiously.

His mask tipped toward her, and she thought he might lunge forward and grab her. He did not.

"Because he was with her!" Vader shook his head furiously. "He must have taken my daughter after Padmé died. Perhaps he killed her himself."

Ahsoka burst out laughing.

Vader stood and stared at her while she stepped back, supporting herself against a wall and attempting to dampen her laughter with her hand.

"You— you think—?" Ahsoka smiled bitterly up at the ceiling. This was too much. She was in a nightmare. "You're such a fool. I'm guessing since you know that much, Padmé knew what you'd become."

"I am stronger now than—!"

"Shut up!" Ahsoka snapped at him. She pushed off the wall and pointed right into his mask. "You're a monster! Padmé was the smartest woman I knew, and if she saw this person that you've become, do you really think she'd let you anywhere near her daughter? Really, Anakin?"

"Do not call me that!" he snarled, his voice tearing out of his vocoder and lashing at her ears.

"What?" Ahsoka asked, her eyes filling with angry, unshed tears. "Your  _name_?"

"That has not been my name in a long time, and you know it."

"It was the name you were born with," Ahsoka gasped, "it was the name your mother gave you! Are you going to pretend like that means nothing?"

"You know  _nothing_  of my mother, or of who I was before and after you knew me!" Vader was clearly restraining himself. His body was coiled, and his fists were flexed in midair, like he wanted to choke her. "Do not presume that because you were once my apprentice, you have intimate knowledge of who I am. This is who I am, Ahsoka!"

"No!" Ahsoka stepped forward, closing a safe gap between them that might have kept her from his itchy fingers if she were quiet. "This is who the Emperor made you! This is not who you are, Anakin, not truly, I  _know_  it!"

"Do not," he hissed, "call me that!"

"Anakin!" Ahsoka cried, taking another step forward so that if she reached out, her fingers could brush his winking breastplate. "Anakin, Anakin,  _Anakin_!"

She hardly got to finish her last cry before his fist came crashing down on her cheek. He backhanded her into the nearest wall, and the pain was blinding. Her forehead knocked against the metal plating, and she blinked rapidly for a moment, gaping at nothing as she attempted to bat the white dots from her eyes.

Her ears rung and her eyes were filled with the void of a thousand white suns. Inside her mouth, she tasted a thousand regrets. Things she never got to say, words she'd swallowed day after day, and for what?

She sunk to the floor as Vader towered over her. Her shoulders slumped, and her jaw clicked as she moved it in a slow circle. Her mouth was raw, glazed with a metallic tang and filling up fast. She glanced up at Vader, and she spat a glob of diluted blood at his feet.

He watched her silently. And then her turned with a sweep of his cape, and left her on the floor.

* * *

Ahsoka woke up the next morning (or rather, after sleeping for several hours) to her cell door sliding open. She bolted upright, eyeing the guard warily as he walked straight up to her bench and dropped a bundle onto her lap.

"Dress quickly," the stormtrooper said, his tinny voice betraying not even a sense of individuality. Ahsoka stared up at him, and she felt a pang of pity. This man was one of the 501st. A cousin of the Clone Trooper army she had commanded. And yet, he was entirely without a personality. Natural born humans were stripped of their individuality while bottle bred clones worked tirelessly to preserve theirs.

It was bitter irony, the way it had all worked out.

Ahsoka rubbed the sleep from her eyes, blearily peering down at the bundle in her lap. It was a neat pile of clothes, topped with a heavy object that was shaped suspiciously like a—

"Vader gave this to you?" she asked the stormtrooper dazedly, holding up the prosthetic hand to the dim cell light. Its matte black finish did not reflect even a single ray. Typical.

"You have three minutes," the trooper said sharply. "If you are not ready by then, you will be shackled and forcibly removed. Understand?"

"Yep."

Ahsoka flung her legs over the side of the bench and held her arm up to the fragmented light. The artificial joint clicked into place, and her nerves woke up with a sudden jolt, as though shocked by a low electric current. The hand whirred mechanically for a second, her fingers flexing unnaturally as they adjusted to being powered up.

She gave the trooper a pointed stare after standing and unfolding the clothes. He stepped back and turned around sharply, his heels clicking together as she rolled her eyes. At least he was smart enough to figure out it was in his best interest not to be awful to her.

The clothes were lighter and more breathable than the Inquisitor's uniform she had been wearing for the past month. There was a pair of breezy black pants that billowed when she moved, and a high necked red shirt that slipped over her like a second skin. She tucked it into the pants and wiggled her bare toes for a moment before glancing up at the stormtrooper expectantly. He looked down at her feet, and then up at her face.

"I was not given shoes," he said.

"Ah," she said. "Damn." Then she offered out her hands, and nodded to herself as the trooper slipped binders onto her wrists.

The starkly gloomy interior of Vader's fortress was not as daunting as it had been the first time she'd been wheeled through it. The long, vacuous black halls, lit by single fluorescent lights lining the onyx tiled floors were almost laughable now that she knew that Vader had little interest in torturing her for information.

She was surprised by the arm and the clothes. They were  _nice_  clothes. Her style, too. The fibers of the shirt were cool and flexible against her skin, and the flowy pants were cinched at her ankles so she would not tread on the hem. Even the arm felt perfect, immediately acquiescing to her every request. She turned her palm over a few times, testing it out beneath the stress of the binders. It did not snag or jump at any angle.

Why had he done this for her?

What did he want?

She was brought into a wide open room, its high ceiling and empty floor giving off an ominous atmosphere. Like the rest of the fortress. She drummed her toes against the cool tile, and she rocked back on her heels.

"So how'd you get this gig?" she asked the trooper conversationally.

He did not answer.

She blew out a puff of breath from between her teeth and stared up at the ceiling. Then a door at the other end of the room slid open, and she straightened up.

Vader strode right up to her, shot her a glance, and then turned to the stormtrooper. "Where are her shoes?"

The stormtrooper stood at attention, and Ahsoka could sense his fear just by looking at him. She did not need the Force to tell her this man was terrified.

"I was not given shoes, Lord Vader."

Vader's hands slid beneath his cape, and he planted them on his hips. "Where are the shoes she arrived with?" he asked briskly.

The stormtrooper's voice stammered behind the helmet. "I— I'm not sure, Lord Vader, I was not here when she—"

"Go get her a pair of shoes," Vader said. "And one of my cloaks."

"Yes, sir!" The trooper saluted and hurried off, leaving Ahsoka to stand awkwardly before Vader. She picked up her heels and plopped them back down on the cold tile. At least the fortress was well ventilated.

"So…" Ahsoka tilted her head. Vader did not look directly at her. "Come on. Are we not going to talk about this?"

"I am not sure what you are referring to," he said.

"This?" Ahsoka gestured to the tender purple bruise on her cheek. "Or this?" She waggled her new fingers at him in a short wave. "Or these?" She did her best to sweep her hands at her overall dress from her binders.

"I will not apologize for hitting you," he said. "You deserved it."

Ahsoka scoffed.

Vader continued, taking a step forward and grabbing her by the binders. Her feet rocked and she stumbled a bit when he yanked her closer.

"You stand out enough," he hissed at her. "Do not make a scene, and do not try to escape."

She smirked up at him. "You taking me out to dinner, Master?" she asked in a biting, sardonic voice.

The binders clicked, and Ahsoka blinked down at them confusedly. They unfastened, the lock mechanism unwinding sharply as Vader pried them from her wrists and tossed them away.

"I think," Vader said, "both you and I have the same goal."

Ahsoka's mind was reeling. She tried to replay their conversation from the previous day, sifting through the nasty words and the careful threats, but she could not for the life of her grasp what he meant.

"Oh?" She smiled up at him tightly. "Enlighten me. What is that?"

"Skywalker," he said.

Ahsoka's brow furrowed. She looked up at him, and she shook her head.

"I'm not helping you capture her," she said firmly. She held out her hands. "Take me back to my cell. I refuse to be complicit in anything you do."

"Do not think me a fool," Vader spat. "You are… flawed in your ideologies, and we do not see eye-to-eye on many details of our shared history. However, our conversation yesterday was enlightening. Obi-Wan never shared with you his intentions with Skywalker. You did not know she existed. But you love her."

Ahsoka bristled at that. In her many years of wandering, hopping from planet to planet, she had met so many people and been touched by so many lives. Love was not a foreign concept to her. Sometimes she felt like maybe she loved too much, and it would be better to close herself off from the whole wide universe. She was still mourning Kanan and Ezra. It wasn't fair that she had to deal with the empty shell that was formerly known as Anakin Skywalker too.

"Help me," Vader said, a small plea buried deep in his baritone voice. "Together we can uncover the truth. Of what happened to Padmé— of Skywalker's past."

"Do you not know her name?" Ahsoka blurted.

Vader's helmet swung sharply in her direction.

Ahsoka peered up at him. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head.

"Like I said," she sighed, closing her eyes, "I'm not interested in helping you kidnap her. But if you want to know more about  _Leia_ , then I'll tag along."

She heard his breath rattle, like it had caught in his throat, and she stared up at his mask in alarm.

"Leia," he said quietly.

Ahsoka swallowed. Had that been a mistake? She was beginning to feel this had all been a mistake. She could have made it off Cymoon 1 if she had really tried. But she hadn't. She had let herself be captured, and all because she felt like she needed answers. Like she could not keep lying to Leia, so confronting Vader was the only option.

She was so stupid!

Ahsoka turned around as the stromtrooper returned, all but running up to her and setting a pair of black Imperial grade boots down in front of her. He had a heavy cape folded over his arms, and he watched as she tugged the boots on. Then she took the cape from the trooper and flung it over her shoulders. There was a hood, and she jumped when Vader reached over her shoulders and tugged it over her head.

"Keep your head down," he hissed. "Do not draw attention to yourself."

"Isn't that counter-intuitive, since I'm with you?" she asked bitterly.

He snatched her by the shoulder without answering and dragged her forward. She wondered if she could escape on this little outing. The temptation was not lost on her. This might be her only chance for freedom.

But there was something about the way he had said Leia's name.

Something about the offer he had made her.

It wasn't a request for her to join him and together they could rule the galaxy, master and apprentice, with the power of the Dark Side.

All he wanted was help finding out what had happened to his daughter. To the woman he had loved.

Ahsoka, for all her faults and all of his, could not blame him for that.

He did not let go of her until they were on the ramp of his yacht. Ahsoka finally was able to get a good look at it, and she realized she recognized the sleek silver design.

"Was this Padmé's?" she asked in quiet awe.

Vader tilted his head back, as though perhaps he had not looked at the ship closely for a very long time, before reply in an equally quiet tone.

"Yes."

And then he strode up the ramp, his heavy steps shaking the whole structure of the ship. She shot one last look at Mustafar, and she bowed her head before following Vader into the ship.

It looked essentially exactly how Padmé had left it. The hold was still surprisingly spacious, and the cockpit was not far behind. Ahsoka approached slowly, suddenly aware of another presence on the ship besides Vader. A starkly bright and cheery feminine voice made Ahsoka pause, and she peered around Vader as he briskly walked up to her.

"That was longer than a minute, boss," said a woman with a round, youthful face who spun around in the pilot's chair and stood up. "I was starting to—"

She immediately cut herself off to stare at Ahsoka. Her dark eyes flickered from the points of her montrals beneath her hood to the black soles of her boots. Ahsoka glanced up at Vader curiously, but he had already dropped into the pilot's chair.

"Hello, there," the woman said curiously, leaning back against the console and eyeing Ahsoka with great interest.

Ahsoka didn't know if she was supposed to speak to this woman. Her gaze fell upon Vader again, but he gave no suggestion that he knew or even cared that this random woman was right beside him. Obviously she worked for him, but she did not look like an Imperial at all. In fact, if Ahsoka had been passing her on the street, judging by her plain fatigues and disheveled appearance, she'd guess that the woman was a rebel pilot or something.

"Who are you?" Ahsoka asked very sharply.

The woman's eyebrows shot up, and she folded her arms across her chest. "I could ask you the same thing," she said.

"Aphra, this is my new apprentice," Vader said. He paused, and Ahsoka realized he was trying to come up with a fake name for her.

"Ashla," Ahsoka said calmly. It was an old alias, but it felt good to try it on again. Like an old jacket that had been worn out years ago.

Vader sighed, as though he had known she would pick something like the literal name of the Light Side of the Force as a pseudonym.

"Ashla, this is Dr. Aphra." Vader flicked a few switches on the dashboard. "She works for me. And she understands that the things she sees require her  _full discretion._ " At this he looked at Aphra pointedly. But Aphra only had eyes for Ahsoka. Her face had split into a big grin, and she nodded eagerly.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, no blabbing, I got it, boss." Aphra pushed off the console and strode up to Ahsoka. "You're tall, aren't you? Damn, look at that." Aphra had decided to stand next to Ahsoka, and she looked up at her with a bright smile. "Incredible! I've never met a female Togruta before. Well, no, that's a lie, but last time was a bit dark, and well..." Aphra trailed off with a cheeky grin.

"Well, I've never met someone who willingly puts up with his shit before," Ahsoka said, nodding to Vader's back. "Especially not so… cheerily."

"Ha!" Aphra clapped her hands together, and she twisted to glance at Vader. "Ha! You gonna put up with that mouth, Lord Vader?"

"I put up with you, don't I?"

"Touché!"

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a protocol droid. Against her better judgement, Ahsoka pushed her hood back a little and said, "Threepio?"

Vader's mask snapped in her direction while Aphra laughed. "What?" She gestured to the silver protocol droid, and she smiled. "You must be confused. This is Triple-Zero. Who's Threepio?"

"A droid your boss built when he was younger," Ahsoka said, taking a step toward Triple-Zero and watching him curiously.

"Ashla," Vader hissed. "Enough."

"What?" Ahsoka asked innocently. "What, I was just—"

The ship took off, and Ahsoka stumbled back as the ship's nose tipped upwards. Her prosthetic arm was caught by the wrist by Aphra, and she was yanked upright and pulled into a chair.

"Steady now, Lady Ashla," Aphra said. "Sounds like you haven't been flying with Lord Vader in awhile. You better buckle up."

Ahsoka swallowed hard, and she quickly belted herself to her chair, nodding vacantly. "Right," she murmured.

Aphra was unusually talkative, and she filled the gap of silence in hyperspace with outlandish stories of her various expeditions and excavations. Ahsoka listened intently, nodding every once in a while, and laughing when the story called for it. Finding out that she was an archaeologist and not some mad scientist that Vader had picked up was alarming. She had to swallow down several hundred questions about why Aphra was with Vader, and not living her life digging out ancient ruins.

"—And then, when I was on Lothal— you know, Lothal is really a beautiful planet, and I don't think it gets the credit it deserves because it's so far out in the Outer Rim, but it's got settlements dating back to the early days of the Old Republic."

"Lothal is beautiful," Ahsoka agreed softly. "It's a shame what the Empire has done to it."

Aphra looked visibly uncomfortable. Her dark eyes swiveled up to Vader uncertainly, and she rocked back in her seat.

"I mean…" She shifted, chewing on her lower lip thoughtfully. "Well, I haven't seen it in a few years, but I saw the holos. I guess it's good that grass grows back."

Ahsoka closed her eyes. She wished she had spoken to Ezra before he had disappeared. She wished that she had been there. Because if she had, would Ezra and Kanan even be missing?

"That is enough chatter," Vader said.

Ahsoka glanced over Aphra's head at Vader's stolid mask, and then focused once more on the woman's face. She was very pretty, with clever eyes and an easy smile.

"So where are we headed?" she asked.

Aphra looked momentarily astonished that she had immediately disobeyed Vader. She swung her chair around to look at him, and when he did not immediately start choking Ahsoka, she swiveled around and smiled.

"Tatooine," she said.

That stunned her. "But you  _hate_  Tatooine," Ahsoka gasped.

"Do you happen to have a planet in mind with more viable answers, Ashla?" Vader hissed. "Enlighten me."

Ahsoka leaned back, and she kept her mouth shut. It made sense when she thought about it, but connecting Vader to Anakin in her head had taken its toll on her. She did not know what to say or do.

"Maybe if you told me exactly what happened—" Ahsoka began, only to be cut off by the glare of Vader's red lenses. She pressed her lips together thinly, and she sighed.

"Right," she muttered. "That's a no."

"We're looking into the pilot that destroyed the Death Star," Aphra said softly, peering under Ahsoka's hood and tilting her head. "Did he not tell you that?"

"No, he let me in on that info." Ahsoka sighed, and she shook her head. "Sorry, I'm really out of it."

"How long have you been his apprentice?" Aphra asked curiously.

"That is none of your concern," Vader said coldly.

Aphra's mouth clamped shut. She shared a discrete look with Ahsoka, one that nearly made her laugh, that said  _get a load of this_. Ahsoka smirked at her, and wondered what her real motive was, working with Vader. Perhaps she owed him something.

They landed on Tatooine sometime later, and the minute Ahsoka stepped down off the yacht, she felt her black cape absorb all the heat in the air and proceed to bake her. She groaned as she bowed her head and trekked silently behind Vader and Aphra.

"Remember the first time you and me came here, Master?" Ahsoka called, peering up at Tatoo 1 and Tatoo 2 and noting their position in the sky. It was nearly sunset.

"I imagine I blocked it out of my memory," Vader said bitterly. "Now enough reminiscing. I did not bring you here for the sake of nostalgia."

"I thought that was  _exactly_  why I was here," Ahsoka said. Aphra turned her head and stared at Ahsoka. The straps of her pilot's cap hung loosely at her jaw as she lowered her head and hid a smirk.

"Ashla… you are wearing my patience."

"You're the one who wanted me to come along."

All of a sudden they halted. Ahsoka kicked a bit of loose sand, her feet cramping in the sturdy, hard leather soles of her boots. She blinked as they came across a domed structure in the middle of the desert, its white clay surface vaguely scorched and cracked from months of disuse.

"This is the place," Aphra said. She had a datapad in her hands, and her eyes flickered from the screen to the dome.

Vader's breath rattled between them. "You're certain?" he asked.

Aphra glanced up at him, and she nodded. "This is where Fett said the girl grew up," she said. "The coordinates match up. Do you want me to call him, or…?"

"That is not necessary."

Vader stood silently while Aphra ducked into the dome. He merely stared, saying nothing, doing nothing, and Ahsoka watched him uncertainly. This whole day was undeniably the strangest thing to happen to her in years. There was no way to read what Vader was thinking, what he planned to do next, what his true motives were. It vexed her that he could be complex. That he was capable of being anything more than a monster, a shell of her former master, a cruel joke that the galaxy had dropped in her lap.

"Have you had enough staring?"

Ahsoka averted her eyes sharply. It was not possible for her face to heat up, because the arid atmosphere was baking her alive, so she imagined her expression merely twisted guiltily.

"Is it strange?" she asked. She followed his gaze toward the setting suns. "Being back where it all started?"

"It is, at the very most, an inconvenience."

Ahsoka closed her eyes. The Shili of her memory was a bright and hazy place. There were white patches where she saw nothing but blinding sunlight and tall grass. There was a smell that came to her sometimes when she was on a rural planet, sweet and distinct, and to this day she could not place what the plant was that she was smelling. Imagining going back to Shili now was like a fever dream. Like maybe the place where she had been born did not even exist at all.

"The place is dead," Aphra said from behind them. "It's been dead for weeks. Do we know what we're looking for?"

"Anything left behind by the residents of this farm," Vader said. "Reports say that it was deserted mere hours before the initial sweep."

"So the scorch marks are just for show?" Aphra rubbed the scuffed stone with the heel of her palm, and she frowned. Ahsoka watched her over her shoulder, and she looked up at Vader.

"All you'll find here is that she lived a quiet, normal life," she said. "Nothing like what you went through."

"You can keep your insights on that matter to yourself," Vader hissed, turning sharply on his heel and brushing past her. He ducked into the entrance of the dome, his cape fluttering after him. Ahsoka closed her eyes. She looked up at the blazing orange circle of Tatoo 2 that dipped close to the horizon, and she realized that she could run.

She stood frozen, her breath caught in her throat. Vader had disappeared into Leia's old home. Aphra had gone in before him. She was alone, and Vader's yacht was not far away. Could she make it?

 _Ahsoka_.

She whirled around at the sound of her name. The voice was undeniably familiar— a faintly croaky version of the honey-coated tone of the Master of her Master. She stared out into the desert dazedly, her mouth falling open. Not too far away, waves of heat shivered above the still sands. She clutched at her cloak, and shivered.

_Ahsoka._

This time she knew she had heard it. She yanked the cloak tighter around herself, and she took a deep breath. Her hood slipped against her cheeks as she closed her eyes. Was she going crazy? On Tatooine, of all places? She thought that she might have lost her mind on Mustafar, not speaking to anyone in a month, but this? It didn't make sense.

 _Ahsoka_.

She opened her eyes. Imbedded in the heat waves, stark against the orange tint that the glowing sunset brought the whole planet, there was a hazy blue silhouette. Ahsoka stared at it, and she felt like it had burned itself into her retinas.

"Ashla!"

Ahsoka jumped. She whirled on her heels, and stared at Vader with large eyes. He had marched out of the Lars's home, and was now approaching her furiously.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"I…" Ahsoka found her head tipping back dazedly. She glanced back at the space where the ghostly visage had appeared, and she found herself breathing very heavily. "Anakin…"

"Do  _not_ —!" he hissed, snatching her by the arm.

"You don't understand," Ahsoka gasped, looking up into his mask in slight panic. "I thought I just saw Obi-Wan!"

" _What_?"

His sudden and all encompassing rage rippled through the Force. His grip on her arm tightened exponentially, and she took a step back in alarm.

She realized all at once what a terrible idea it had been to tell him.

"That," Vader spat, "is a terrible lie. I know you were thinking about fleeing, and I warn you that any attempt at escape will result in an unpleasant death indeed."

"Uh…" Ahsoka exhaled, and she knew it was probably better that he did not believe her. "Right. Okay. Can you let go of me?"

Vader released her, but planted a hand on her back and pushed her forward. She slumped and slipped down into the Lars's home. It smelled like soot and dust, and when her fingers grazed the walls, her fingers came back black.

She pushed her hood back, allowing her lekku and montrals to breath for the first time in hours. Aphra's eyes found Ahsoka like a beacon, and she stared for a little longer than was appropriate.

"There are blaster marks beneath the burns," Aphra said, her eyes lingering on Ahsoka as she addressed Vader. "Imperial. Did you order their execution?"

"As I said," Vader told her curtly, "they managed to evade us by mere hours."

Ahsoka strode forward as Triple-Zero began to bemoan the deaths of some droids. She could feel Leia's presence in the Force lingering, and it grew stronger as she moved. There was a small, smooth holodisc on the floor beneath a smashed bit of clay. Ahsoka crouched down and slid the broken pottery gingerly out of the way with her metal hand while scooping up the holo projector with her flesh one. It was in fine condition, considering the state of the home, and it flickered on in her hand.

She took a deep breath, and she immediately turned it off.

"What do you have there?" Vader asked sharply.

Ahsoka stood, and she closed her eyes. She half turned to face him, and tossed the disc at him half-heartedly. He caught it easily in his fist, and examined it for a moment.

The holo burst into life in his palm, a shimmering blue snapshot of Leia Skywalker beaming arm and arm with her aunt and uncle. Ahsoka watched Vader freeze, and then stiffen up. He stared at the holo for a long time, his uneven breaths rasping away in the gaping silence. Aphra said nothing, but she stared at Vader with a knitted brow. Ahsoka merely watched sadly.

He raised a hand slowly. His fingers slipped through the hologram, and Leia's face scrambled between his knuckles. The images blotted out, and was replaced by another holo, this time a recording.

" _What are you doing?_ " A slightly younger, more impudent Leia squinted through the projection. She seemed to be sitting on a table, a droid head in her lap. " _Aw, Uncle Owen, are you recording me? Ha! You do love me._ "

A kind, feminine voice that Ahsoka recognized as Beru Lars from when she helped relocate the family to Naboo spoke.

" _It's your birthday, Leia!_ "

Leia's round face and big brown eyes seemed to fall steadily in shock. Her hair was braided messily around her head, and she gaped at the holo recorder. " _Oh,_ " she gasped. " _Really? Man, I've been so busy, I guess I forgot. What'd you get me?"_

" _Classic Leia,"_  a gruff male voice, that of Owen Lars, said.

The holo looped back, and Vader flicked it with his finger. The next one was also a holo recording. It was Leia once more, bare foot in what appeared to be a garage, her long hair loose as she spun around and around, singing a song loudly and off key. It sounded like it was in Huttese, and Vader watched for a moment, clearly mesmerized, before he moved on.

The next holo was of Leia again, grinning toothily beside Owen Lars, a blowtorch in her gloved fist and goggles strapped to her forehead. Owen was not looking, and instead pointing at the gutted innards of a power cell.

The next was a close up of Leia's face, and her eyes were downcast, clearly distracted and speaking quickly. "— _uh-huh, uh-huh, just wait. I've got you down to a science, my friend._ "

They were in the kitchen, or what once was the kitchen, and Leia took a bit of engine grease from a rag on her belt and smeared it over her upper lip. She put on a deep drawl as she smirked casually at the holo recorder.

" _Hey, hey, hey,_ " she said, " _no trouble here. What's your name, sir? Well, well, you can call me Biggs! Biggs Darklighter, at your service! Aha, ha!_ " She stooped over as she chortled, her shoulders shaking deliberately.

" _Okay, okay, okay,_ " gasped a male voice that Ahsoka did not recognized " _You got me, Skygal. Now get that shit off your face before it melts your lip."_

Leia caught a fresh towl, and she pouted. " _You're no fun,_ " she whined, wiping her face.

The last holo made Ahsoka gasp. She lifted her hand and tore it from Vader's hand with the Force just as it clenched into a fist. Leia's bright, happy face, and an odd, elderly picture of Obi-Wan Kenobi flickered in midair. It flew into Ahsoka's hand, and she stared at it.

"Even from the  _grave_  he mocks me!" Vader snarled.

Both Ahsoka and Aphra jumped and scrambled away as a busted droid flew across the dilapidated room, smashing into several hundred pieced off the scorched wall.

"That's not it!" Ahsoka gasped. She took a step forward, very carefully, and held her hands out in surrender. "Use your head for a minute and think!"

"Your mind is clouded by his lies," Vader hissed, his shoulders tensing up as he glared at her. She knew he was glaring through his helmet. It was almost funny.

"And yours is clouded by hate!" Ahsoka snapped right back. She stepped forward again. "I am not one of your Imperial lapdogs that you can push around like pieces on a board! And neither is Leia!"

"Aphra," Vader said, his voice dangerously low. "Leave me and my apprentice."

Aphra's dark, clever eyes, flickered fearfully toward Ahsoka's face. She realized that the poor woman probably assumed Vader was going to kill her. She was touched by the concern, because she had grown to really appreciate Aphra's presence during this awful outing.

Very slowly, Aphra backed away toward the exit. Her and Triple-Zero disappeared back up into the desert, and Vader turned to stare at Ahsoka.

"You speak of things that you do not understand," he said. "You do not know Obi-Wan as I knew him. He is a traitor, a liar, and a thief!"

"He's dead!" Ahsoka screamed. Tears settled at the corners of her vision, and she listened to her own voice crack and crumble under the weight of her own grief. "You killed him! You loved him more than any Jedi ever loved their Master— more than I loved you, even! And you killed him!"

"He is  _deceitful_ , Ahsoka!" Vader's shoulders trembled, but that was the only indication that he felt anything at all. "He filled Padmé's head with lies, and she turned against me!"

"You mean he told her the truth?" Ahsoka could not believe that he was this ignorant. She could not believe this was the same man who had taught her how to be a Jedi. "Of course she'd turn against you! You destroyed everything she ever cared about!"

"You don't know what you're saying," Vader said furiously, his hands closing sharply into fists. "You did not know Padmé as I did."

"You're acting like I didn't know them at all!" Ahsoka flung her arms out, her cloak flicking behind her. "Like you have some weird ownership over Padmé and Obi-Wan's memory! Well, here's a newsflash for you, Anakin. You don't. You don't get to lord yourself over them, like they weren't people independent of your sick power play!" Ahsoka paused, her face ruddy and streaked with tears. She gulped a breath, and continued. "Padmé loved the Republic and democracy more than she loved anything. You destroyed that. You destroyed everything she worked so hard her entire life to preserve. She should have killed you. I wouldn't have blamed her."

"You don't know  _anything_!" Vader snarled. The earth seemed to quake beneath them. A crack spider-webbed its way up the arch of a wall to their right.

"I know enough!" Ahsoka roared right back, jerking her forefinger at him and baring her teeth. Tears slipped steadily onto her cheeks. "I know what you and Master Obi-Wan taught me! I know that you loved him, and that he adored you, and I loved you both so much, but you don't  _care_! You don't care about me at all, Anakin! How am I supposed to feel? What am I supposed to say to you? I can barely look at you!"

Vader did not respond. He looked at her, and it seemed as though he was looking right through her.

She thought she could be strong in the face of Darth Vader. She convinced herself that she was, in the month between visitations. But right now, standing in the middle of Leia Skywalker's burned up childhood home, she felt weak and muddled, like a child who'd lost their way.

Vader exhaled, and he said in a low, quiet voice, "Ahsoka…"

A sob fell from her lips. She turned away sharply, clamping her hands over her mouth and walking up to the nearest piece of debris and collapsing onto it. She buried her face in her hands, taking deep, shaky breaths.

Why had she agreed to come? She had been so much safer in her cell, where he rarely visited, and she could focus on meditation.

The holodisc was in her lap. She wondered if she should give it to him, or if he'd just destroy it. It didn't really matter, because he would get it either way.

She froze up, a sob dying in her throat as the debris she was sitting on creaked, and a sudden weight fell beside her. Her mouth fell open, and she stared blankly ahead of her for a moment, blinking tears from her eyes, before her eyes slid up to Vader's mask beside her.

"What," she gasped, "are you  _doing_?"

Vader bowed his head. His respirator rasped eerily.

He said nothing.

Ahsoka shook her head furiously, and she stood up. She tossed the holo projector into his lap, and she flung her hood up over her montrals. "I've had enough," she said in a low, defeated voice. She turned away and marched up through the exit and back into the desert.

Unbearably close by, Aphra turned her face toward Ahsoka in alarm.

"Are you…?" Aphra's face wrinkled up, like she was not used to checking to see if other sentient lifeforms were okay. She looked startled to see Ahsoka's tears. "Oh no. What did he do?"

"Nothing," Ahsoka said stiffly. Her voice was thick with phlegm, and she sniffled. "Don't worry about it."

Aphra grimaced. "I guess it's hard," she said wistfully, "when it's Darth Vader. You can't really get out of something like that."

"I guess you'd know," Ahsoka murmured.

Aphra smiled grimly. She took Ahsoka gently by the shoulder and led her back to the ship.

* * *

The sky was dim on Coruscant, and the wide circular window reflected the map of flickering lights as speeder lanes dotted the dark sky. Shadows crept across the floor, and whispers filled the empty space where cushions designated for fallen Jedi Councilmen sat once.

Ahsoka rested her hands on her knees. She felt small here, and naked, like a newborn child. Artificial light shifted through the high glass above her, and she gazed up at it curiously.

"Did you ever imagine it would end up this way, little one?"

Ahsoka jumped to her feet. She had been meditating for long enough that she felt comfortable, and her surroundings had morphed into a vision of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Her home. Her eyes flickered in the darkness and settled on the lone settled seat in the ring of empty chairs.

"Obi-Wan," she exhaled shakily.

He looked like a holo. Like he was chiming in from the battlefront on Felucia, his heel crossed over his knee and his chin cupping in his hand. There was a steady blue light radiating from his skin, and it cast the dark room in an eerie neon glow. His once handsome, youthful face was now wizened and worn, echoing the face of the man in the holo that Ahsoka had found.

He smiled softly at her. His eyes were familiar, and they glistened with a heavy sorrow that she felt in the pit of her stomach.

"Hello, Ahsoka." His gaze fell away from her face, toward the glittering city outside the yawning circle window. She could see both the back of his chair, and the reflection of Coruscant's lights inside his eyes. Was this a dream?

She backed away from him slowly. Her bare feet padded softly against the floor. There was no here, no now, but merely an in-between. That was the only state she could live in. An in-between. A limbo. No light. No darkness. Simply the middle.

The Bendu.

She collapsed onto her knees and closed her eyes. If she meditated more, if she dug deeper, maybe this would make sense.

"Does that help?"

Ahsoka's eyelids peeled back, and she looked up at him. He was watching her with a small, sad smile.

"You're the one who taught me that meditating calms the nerves," she said.

Obi-Wan's smile widened a bit. "I suppose I did."

He stood suddenly, his body strangely translucent as he moved slowly toward her. The blue glow that filled the room was highly concentrated around his skin. He stopped and stooped before her, meeting her at eyelevel. Ahsoka stared at him, her eyes wide and her mouth parted. If she wanted, she could reach out and touch him.

Of course, there was nothing to touch.

"Why didn't you come find me?" Ahsoka whispered.

Obi-Wan's expression crumpled, and his watery blue eyes fell to the floor. He bowed his head in nothing if not shame.

"You have met Leia," Obi-Wan said quietly. "You know."

Ahsoka's words died in her mouth. If this was really happening, then she had to accept that she was significantly less important to both Anakin and Obi-Wan than Leia Skywalker. And she could not be jealous of that. As an adult, as someone who knew Leia, she understood that this was the logical path Obi-Wan would take. He had no idea that Ahsoka was even out there, and no reason to go looking.

And yet, this hurt.

"Ahsoka," Obi-Wan said gently, as she turned her face away. "I did not choose Leia over you. I love you, and I have missed you desperately. But you were grown, and I had faith in what Anakin and I taught you. Leia was but a few hours old. I had no choice."

"No," she murmured, shaking her head furiously. "No, I— I get it. I really do. But, Master… I just have one question."

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, as though awaiting a long-delayed blaster shot to the skull. He nodded.

Ahsoka breathed in, and she breathed out, and she tried to hear the Obi-Wan of her past inside her head, but now this old man's silky tone filled her head. It was like frequencies overlaying, a rasp of the past bleeding into the present and flickering uncertainly.

"Are you real?" she asked him finally. Her voice was nothing but a small, trembling breath.

The echo of what the Jedi Temple once was, the stream of flickering lights in the night sky in the window above them, even the shadows on the floor, it all seemed so real. She had dreamed this dream a thousand times. Meditation often brought her back to her childhood, and she basked in the lukewarm glow of forgotten promises and bitter defeats.

But Obi-Wan seemed so artificial. He was a picture on a flickering screen, a blue glow that had no pulse and no breath, and yet it existed. It was here. It was not a holo, and it was not a dream.

It could be a vision, but she wasn't so sure.

Obi-Wan's eyes fluttered open. She stared into them, and saw the Jedi Council's chairs on the other side. They were unbelievably sad.

"I am as real as the stars in the sky," Obi-Wan said softly, "or the lava streaming in rivers outside this castle."

It was difficult to curb her disbelief. She had spent months convincing herself that she would never see him again, and here he was. Kneeling before her, looking entirely unreal, and she felt the Force tremble and sing with every move he made.

"You're really here?" she whispered.

Obi-Wan blinked down at her. He nodded. And with that nod, the Jedi Temple broke. It cracked like glass, and it shattered all around them, light slithering through the air and blinding them for a brief moment before fading into gray panels and dim, artificial light.

Beside her on the floor of her cell, Obi-Wan Kenobi tilted his head back. He looked around him, and he sighed deeply.

"The commodities Darth Vader supplies are much to be desired, I see," he said dryly.

"I'm glad you kept your humor intact," Ahsoka muttered, leaning her back against her bench and slouching. "I guess not even death can shake your wit."

"Death and half a lifetime on Tatooine, are hardly comparable, my dear," he said. "One is a small reprieve from the suffering of humanity. The other is what I imagine hell to be in many sentient cultures."

Ahsoka snorted, and she lifted up one leg to rest her chin on her knee. "Don't be so dramatic," she sighed.

"I raised Anakin Skywalker," Obi-Wan said in a smooth, matter-of-fact voice. "I am allowed to be dramatic."

Ahsoka smiled grimly. He had a point there.

"So… you really are dead." Ahsoka exhaled through her teeth and sunk lower onto the floor. "Force… I never thought…"

"That Anakin would kill me?" Obi-Wan sighed, and he shook his head. "I cannot explain what the Dark Side has done to him, but that man is not the boy I knew. The boy I trained. The boy I raised."

Ahsoka swallowed hard. She did not want to say what she felt in her heart, that Vader was  _exactly_  the same person as Anakin Skywalker. What had happened to make him this way, she could not say. It was like he was under a spell.

"You convinced Leia to kill him," Ahsoka said quietly.

Obi-Wan stared at her. He did not deny it.

"You and I both know that Leia would have come to that conclusion on her own," he said.

"Revenge is not the Jedi way!" Ahsoka cried. She smacked the floor with both her hands, and she shot Obi-Wan a bitter look. "I don't condone this! Leia deserves better. She deserves to know the truth!"

"The truth," Obi-Wan said. He closed his eyes, and he nodded. "Which truth do you mean? The truth that her father, who she grew up idolizing— before I knew her and after— destroyed the Republic, butchered the Jedi, nearly murdered her mother, and tortured her brother?  _That_  truth?"

Ahsoka bolted upright. " _Brother_?" she gasped.

Obi-Wan pressed his lips together thinly. He peered at her, and he stroked his chin thoughtfully.

"Do not pretend like you did not know," he said softly.

That, she wanted to point out, was not the point. This meant that all those years of suspecting that she was secretly tutoring Anakin's son was now a fact. This meant that she had watched Anakin's son grow up. She had helped him become the man he was today.

This meant that Vader had unwittingly tortured his son and destroyed his planet.

"I did," she murmured, pulling her knees up to her mouth and pressing it against them. She closed her eyes and slipped her face down so her forehead touched her knees. "I mean, I suspected… I wasn't sure, especially when Leia showed up…"

"I am trusting you not to tell Vader," Obi-Wan said darkly.

Ahsoka picked up her head and glared at him. "Excuse me," she said, "I'm offended."

"Keeping Leia away from Vader seems like an impossible task," Obi-Wan murmured. "I have been trying her whole life, and yet she flings herself at him any chance she gets. And she does not listen to me."

"Have you ever appeared to her like this?" Ahsoka asked curiously.

"I've tried," he sighed, drawing a hand down his face, "but she does not see me. Sometimes she hears me, but…"

"She's not powerful enough in the Force," Ahsoka said quietly. "I understand. She isn't exactly the best at meditation."

"No. She is not."

Ahsoka shifted. The floor was not exactly a comfortable place, and peering into Obi-Wan's face made her feel inadequate. Like she had lost a game, and she had hardly been a player to begin with.

"Obi-Wan," Ahsoka said, searching his old face for some sort of sign, some sort of answer, "what happened between you and Anakin?"

Obi-Wan sighed. He leaned back, and he thumbed his beard. "I suppose I owe you an explanation," he said. "However… I don't have one."

Ahsoka stared at him blankly. "Excuse me?" she said flatly.

"I don't know what happened to Anakin," Obi-Wan said, his voice steady and rueful. "I wish I had the answers, Ahsoka, but I don't. I left Anakin on Coruscant in order to take down Grievous. I did. And then the Clones began attacking, and I had to flee Uta'pau— it was unsightly, but Senator Organa managed to find me. We returned to Coruscant, to the Temple, and…"

He stopped, thankfully, to allow her to grieve. She heaved a deep breath, and curled up against the cold, hard durasteel bench.

Once that minute was up, Obi-Wan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "We returned to the temple, and found the result of Order 66. There was security footage that gave us the truth of Anakin's Fall, and I sent out a message to all remaining Jedi to stay away from the Temple. After that, I told Padmé…"

"She confronted him," Ahsoka murmured. "Of course she did… I'm surprised she didn't try to kill him."

"I'm sure if she had lived any longer, she would have," Obi-Wan admitted. "Anakin was detrimental to the Republic, and a danger to her children. But she could never have killed him. Only a Jedi has that capability."

"Like Leia," Ahsoka said bitterly.

"Or," Obi-Wan said, his endlessly sad gaze falling upon her, "you."

Ahsoka lifted her head. She sunk lower onto the floor, and she held her head in her hands for a moment. She found herself shaking her head.

"That's not fair," she whispered.

"I know it isn't."

"Then don't tell me that this falls on me!" Ahsoka lifted herself up and whirled away. She braced her hands against a wall, and she took a deep breath. Could she kill Anakin? She had certainly tried. Twice. But trying and doing were two completely different things.

And Vader and Anakin were not.

They would both be better people if they quit pretending they were.

"I'm sorry," Obi-Wan said. His voice was tight, but genuine. "I never meant for this to happen. I never expected our failures to be placed on your shoulders, Ahsoka."

"I am in prison!" She pushed off the wall and twisted to glare at him. "You're dead! Neither of us are the saviors the Jedi Order would expect us to be."

Obi-Wan watched her. He lowered his head, and his hands disappeared into his sleeves.

"I spent twenty years protecting Leia from the truth," Obi-Wan said, his voice low and soft. It was barely above a whisper, and it fluttered in the air like wings beating. "There was a time when I was against her becoming a Jedi. Did you know that?"

Ahsoka swallowed. She turned slowly to face him, and she shook her head.

"Well," Obi-Wan said, smiling at nothing, "I let my fear get the best of me. I did not trust her, and that was my mistake. Perhaps I made the mistake of never telling her who her father was, but you cannot fault me for feelings cautious when faced with the reality that I must tell an eleven year old that her father, whom she has idolized since birth, is a cold-blooded killer that I helped create. And the longer I waited, the harder it became. She is so steadfast and headstrong— it was impossible to get through to her on a good day. She would not take it well."

"Ugh…" Ahsoka groaned and rubbed her forehead irritably. "This is too much. I can't kill him, and I don't think you should let Leia without telling her who he is. That would be catastrophic."

Obi-Wan lowered his eyes. She knew that he knew that she was right.

"I will consider it," he said.

Ahsoka looked at him in wonder. She had never seen Obi-Wan yield so quickly.

And then her door slid open. She scrambled back, her eyes flitting wildly to the door. The moment she glanced back at Obi-Wan, he was gone. She fell back against her bench, and sat down dazedly.

"What?" she said, her voice small and thin.

Vader stood before her for a moment, his shoulders stooped and his head bowed. He began to pace, and Ahsoka watched with a frown as he silently stalked from one side of her cell to the other. His respirator ticked off the seconds that passed as she sat and he strode.

"My daughter," he hissed, "has made off with Doctor Aphra. Do you know where she might have taken her?"

Ahsoka quirked a hairless brow. She  _did_  have an idea that bounced around in her head almost immediately, but she was not prepared to let such a facility, and likely Aphra herself, perish.

"Don't you sound proud," Ahsoka said, her voice cheerful and excessively bitter. She lounged back against her bench, and she shrugged. "If Aphra is smart, she'll defect. The rebellion could use a girl like her."

Vader made a sound like a scoff. "Aphra is too shrewd and devoted to living to resort to such a tactic," he said. "No one that truly motivated by self-preservation would join the Rebel Alliance."

Ahsoka smirked. It was not meant to be a compliment, but she'd take it.

"I have no idea where Leia might have taken Aphra," she said simply. "Bases change all the time, and I've been here for months. Any information I have is outdated."

"I find that difficult to believe," he hissed.

Ahsoka peered up at him, and her smirk never wavered.

"Well," she said, "you better."

Vader might have torn her apart if she were anyone else. If this was any other situation, if they were not speaking intimately about his secret daughter he'd had with a long dead Senator during the Clone Wars. Ahsoka felt confident in his value to him that she did not fear her life, and she had been here long enough that she was pretty sure he would not torture her. The irony was not lost on her.

"Tell me what happened," Ahsoka said softly.

Vader's mask tipped down toward her sharply. She sat with her shoulders slumped and her arms between her knees, and she stared up at him grimly.

"I was shot down on Vrogas Vos," he said. His fists clenched at his sides, and he turned away. "Aphra had Leia, but the girl must have outsmarted her."

"Leia is very resourceful," Ahsoka said sagely. "Even against someone like Doctor Aphra. And obviously they won't hurt her."

"You think I am worried about that fool's safety?" Vader hissed.

Ahsoka blinked up at him. She rolled her eyes and leaned back against the wall.

"You want to be sure she doesn't blab your secrets," Ahsoka said.

"Precisely."

"You're an idiot." Ahsoka shook her head, ignoring the clear glare he shot her and smiling at him. "She likes living, right? And the Rebels aren't really known for their rough and tumble interrogations. She won't say anything."

"Her very existence puts me in jeopardy." Vader shook his head. "She must die."

"Uh,  _my_  existence also puts you in jeopardy," Ahsoka pointed out. She frowned, and she tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Now that I think about it, why  _do_  you keep me around? Are the memories just that good?"

Vader stiffened. He paused for a long moment before turning away. "I have already disposed of one of Leia's teachers," he said, his voice low and slow. "She would hardly forgive another."

Ahsoka stared at him, her heart sinking. "You're lying," she whispered.

It was so hard to look past her heartache and despair and see that this man was really, truly the same person as her Master. She felt like she had built a wall around her feelings regarding the Jedi, the Purge, and Anakin Skywalker, and ever since she had arrived on Mustafar that wall began crumbling. Everything felt like a trial with him.

"Why did you save me?" Ahsoka asked suddenly. She looked up, and she searched his mask desperately, as though she might find an ounce of humanity left inside it. "On Malachor? Leaving me under the rubble would have been easier, or cutting off my head instead of my arm. So why save me?"

As he looked down at her, she felt that she could not have been more wrong about him. Maybe he  _would_  just kill her. And would that not be easier on both of them? He would not have a liability hanging around his home, and she could rest easy knowing she would not give up Alliance secrets under pressure. It was a win-win.

And yet, he stared.

And yet, he turned around. He left her cell.

* * *

Obi-Wan would appear sporadically. There was no real pattern to when or why he showed up, but when he did, Ahsoka was grateful. They were nearing nearly a year into her imprisonment, and both Obi-Wan and Vader showed up at random, at any given time. Usually it was Obi-Wan, as Vader was usually out and about, creating chaos in the galaxy. She did not know how to feel when she realized he often came to her cell upon returning home to Mustafar, like she was some sort of pet he had forgotten to feed.

"Yes, I agree that Leia is like Anakin," Ahsoka sighed, "but that does not mean—"

"I do not mean to imply that she is in danger of Falling," Obi-Wan cut in, holding up one hand to signal peace. "I merely wish to address the possibility. Anakin had the guidance of the entire Order, and that did not save him, in the end."

"Again," Ahsoka said through gritted teeth, "Leia is  _not_  Anakin. She is smarter than that."

Obi-Wan plucked idly at the gray hair on his chin, and he shook his head. "I told myself that for years," he said, "and yet, I have my doubts. Because Anakin was certifiably a genius."

"Smart people can be evil," Ahsoka murmured.

Obi-Wan did not reply. It was times like these, when Ahsoka came dangerously close to reminding him that Anakin and Vader were the same person, that he promptly changed the subject to something more palatable— immortality.

"Have you been doing the meditations, like I told you?" he asked.

Ahsoka glared at him. Why did he think she wanted to be immortal, anyway? To be conscious of all the suffering in the galaxy after she died? Wasn't all this enough as it was?

"I've been thinking about it," she said. "I guess I've done it a bit, since I've got nothing but free time. But really, Obi-Wan, I don't think this ghost thing is for me."

"You don't want to haunt Vader from beyond the grave?" Obi-Wan frowned at her, and then laughed playfully. "You really have grown up."

The familiar, offbeat presence of her former Master crushed her like an anvil. She unfolded herself from the floor, and she watched the door dully.

"I guess you're gonna disappear now, huh?" Ahsoka shot a glance at Obi-Wan.

And, like clockwork, he was gone.

"Sweet Force," she muttered, "what a predictable man."

She waited patiently, her head tipped back in apprehension as the presence grew stronger and stronger. And then she realized there was something off. There was another presence, this one just as familiar and shimmering faintly before her like distant water.

Ahsoka pushed herself to her feet as the door slid open. The Force was shivering uncertainly around her, coiling and uncoiling like a snake. She found herself overwhelmed by the mix of emotions, and the mix of atmospheres. She looked up at Vader, and her mouth opened. It remained open, and no sound came out.

"I have found something of yours," Vader said, his voice echoing off the durasteel walls and rebounding back toward him. He reached outside the door, and dragged a disgruntled looking man into her cell. The man backpedaled, his hands cuffed and his fingers splayed.

For a moment she did not recognize him. He was shorter than both herself and Vader, and he wore a loose white cotton shirt and a beaten, boiled leather vest that was fixed with holsters for missing blasters. There was a somewhat fresh stain down the front of his shirt, and it became clear as he lifted his head that it had come from his nose, as both his nostrils were swollen and red, with deep rusty trails of dried blood crusting around the stubble on his upper lip. His hair curled against his forehead, a rich black hue with a faintly blue tint, and stubble crawled along his strong jaw.

She stared at him for a long moment as he glared up at Vader, pure disdain rolling from him in the Force.

And then he lifted his eyes, and everything snapped into place.

The light in the Force, dimmed but familiar, shimmering like a reflection of the sun in a lake. The way he held himself, the distinct color of his hair, the proud line of his nose. She knew him.

" _Ezra_ ," she breathed.

At the sound of her voice, all his hostility vanished, and his head snapped in her direction. His eyes lingered on her face, his lips parting in confusion and alarm, and then, finally, overwhelming joy. She saw his eyes, and they began to glisten in the poor, artificial light of her cell.

"Ahsoka?" he croaked. He tried to step forward, but Vader's fist was still tight around his bicep. He stumbled, and he tugged vainly at his arm.

In an inexplicable surge of delight, she rushed forward and grasped Ezra's face in her hands. The stubble on his cheeks felt scratchy against her flesh palm, and she could not quite believe he was old enough to grow any sort of stubble at all. She turned his face in her hands, and she was struck by how much he looked like the holo she had seen of his father. His hair had a small, sweeping wave to it, and it fell onto his forehead when she tilted his head down. Very gingerly, she brushed it back.

She yanked him into a tight hug, pressing her cheek to his head and squeezing him tight. Then she shot a furious glare up at Vader.

"What did you do?" she hissed.

Vader tipped his mask down at her. "Do not sound so grateful all at once," he retorted, his voice clipped and clearly dripping with the sort of sarcasm she might have expected from Anakin Skywalker. Not, however, Darth Vader. "Did I not bring him to you?"

"He's bleeding!" Ahsoka hovered over Ezra protectively, her hand disappearing in his hair while she pressed his face to her collarbone. His wrists were bound, but she could feel him leaning heavily against her. "Let go of him. Honestly!"

Vader released Ezra, and Ahsoka pulled him away. She stroked his hair very gently, feeling slightly starved for human interaction, and allowed him to completely hide his face in her neck.

"Ahsoka," he whispered, "Ahsoka, I'm so sorry… I got caught, and I… I didn't know you were here, otherwise—"

"Shh," she hushed him, "Ezra, this is not your fault. Okay?"

He took a deep, shuddering breath. He raised his face shakily, and looked into her eyes. There were tears gleaming there.

"Okay," he whispered.

Ahsoka turned her attention back to Vader. "The binders too. Where do you think he's going? We're trapped on a lava planet!"

"You both have escaped from tighter binds," Vader pointed out.

Ahsoka chewed on the inside of her lip as she glared at him. "Yeah, but usually  _you_  weren't in our way. Come on. You wouldn't have brought him to me if you didn't trust me at least a  _little_."

To Ahsoka's surprised, Vader did not respond. He merely looked at her, as though perhaps he had actually heard her for what felt like the first time, and then he turned to Ezra. He gestured for him to come closer.

Ezra stared at him with large eyes, and his mouth fell open. "Uh…?" He glanced up at Ahsoka helplessly. She nodded at him.

"It's okay," she whispered. "Go on. If he was going to kill you, he would have already."

"Well  _that's_  assuring," Ezra muttered. But he put on a brave face and stepped forward anyway. Vader manually released the mechanism on the binders, which was likely meant to be difficult for a Force wielder to get out of.

Immediately after being released, Ezra took three large steps back, and he inched closer to Ahsoka. She offered out her arm, and he shrank a bit as he fell into her embrace.

Ahsoka stared at Vader. He stared back. Ezra merely bowed his head, and Ahsoka could tell how confused he was.

"Tell me what's happening," Ahsoka demanded.

Vader looked back behind him at the door. He then moved further into her cell, and she backed away slowly. She brought Ezra to her bench and as they sat down, she wrapped her blanket around him.

"What's going on?" Ezra whispered to her, tugging the blanket around his shoulders and glancing worriedly up at Vader.

"It's okay," Ahsoka told him gently, placing a hand on his head. She looked up at Vader expectantly, a brow arched. "Well?"

Vader shook his head. "You are infuriating," he informed her.

She couldn't help the smile that rose to her lips, and she shrugged. "You flatter me," she said. "But really. Why do you have Ezra?"

"I stumbled upon him." Vader's head tilted toward Ezra, as though he was considering him briefly before deciding he was not worth the attention. "He had no lightsaber, so capturing him was hardly a challenge."

"What?" Ahsoka looked down at Ezra sharply. "Where is your lightsaber, Ezra?"

Ezra's jaw tightened. He shrugged.

"Mother of Moons," Ahsoka muttered, "alright. So you found Ezra, and then you just… what? Wanted to flaunt that you captured one of my friends at me?"

"That was not my intention."

"He staged an execution," Ezra blurted.

Ahsoka looked down at him. Then she looked up at Vader in shock.

"Is this true?" she asked.

Vader did not reply, and Ezra stared at him blankly.

"He captured me in a really public place, and he put a bag over my head. The next thing I knew, I was watching some other poor sucker get shot."

"You were both criminals," Vader said stiffly. "I hardly see how it makes a difference."

Ahsoka's arm tightened around Ezra. It dawned on her what he had done.

First on Malachor, by cutting off her arm and freeing her from the rubble. Then on Cymoon 1, by killing all the troopers who had seen her face. And now this. Saving Ezra Bridger. For her. Specifically for her.

"I don't understand," Ezra said, turning to face Ahsoka. His eyes searched her face desperately. "What's happening?"

"Darth Vader saved your life," Ahsoka said, her voice carefully devoid of emotion. "That's what's happening."

Ezra blinked, momentarily stunned, and he reeled back in alarm. "I—  _huh_?" He gasped, shooting a glance up at Vader and shrinking in his seat. Ahsoka gave him a pointed look, but Vader did not even spare a glance at Ezra.

"I think…" Ahsoka took a deep breath. She stood up and she squared her shoulders, drawing as much strength as she could from deep within her heart. "I think you know exactly what this means to me. And I appreciate it."

The truth was, she did not know what this meant. Vader could have killed Ezra, and she would never have known. For a long time she had just assumed he had been dead anyway. But now he was here, and Vader had brought him to her.

"Perhaps," Vader said, after a long moment of studying her, "this will keep you from talking to yourself at odd hours."

Ahsoka's mouth fell open. Did he have some kind of microphone in her cell? Or maybe she had just been too loud, often growing frustrated with Obi-Wan, and raising her voice.  _At least he just thinks I'm going crazy cooped up in here_ , she thought, closing her mouth.  _Rather than talking to his dead master_.

"Maybe," she said, folding her arms across her chest and smirking up at him. "No promises, though."

Vader sighed. He looked down at her, and he shook his head.

"It is not my intention to cause you pain, Ahsoka," he said quietly.

She smiled up at him grimly. Her heart ached, and she closed her eyes. At any other time, she probably would have replied bitterly, " _Well, you have a funny way of showing it._ " However, right now she was overcome with varying emotions, and her heart was not working right. All the loss and confusion and joy and despair flooding her senses, it made her feel like she was going to burst into tears.

And that could not happen.

"I know," she said, her voice just as quiet as his. She pressed her lips together, and she bowed her head low. "I know…"

Vader did not respond immediately. Maybe he had not expected her reply, or maybe he was considering how many mistakes he had made up until this point. Ahsoka looked up at him, and her heart sank when she realized she was looking at him through a screen of tears.

"What?" Vader demanded. He took a step back, clearly affronted by the tears on her cheeks. "What is this? I have done nothing to offend, hurt, or mock you— this behavior is unwarranted."

Ahsoka bit her lip, and she glanced back at Ezra. He was leaning forward on the edge of the bench, gaping up at her. She took a deep breath and turned back to Vader.

"Ezra doesn't deserve to be trapped here," she said, her voice trembling. "I— I understand that what you did was probably treasonous, and I'm grateful that you brought him to me, but I— I just…" She squeezed her arms, and swallowed hard. "How  _long_? How long are we going to be stuck here?"

"Until Leia joins me," Vader said firmly, "and we overthrow the Emperor."

"That is never going to happen!" Ahsoka cried, drawing her hands down her face and groaning. "Anakin, I love you, but you're delusional! She's never going to join you, she's too stubborn!"

They had had this argument before— enough times that he did not immediately blow up at the suggestion that Leia was not interested in power or the Dark Side.

"Regardless," Vader said, with a visible amount of restraint, "you both are supposed to be dead. I cannot allow you to roam free until I am ready to make my opposition against the Emperor known."

" _You_  are going to betray the Emperor?" Ezra gasped. Ahsoka glanced back at him, and he slumped his head back against the durasteel wall. "Whoa. I just… Am I dead? This can't be real life."

"It's real, Ezra," Ahsoka said. She sniffled, and she wiped her cheek with her wrist. "What if you sent us out with your agent, Aphra? I promise we'll be good."

"Aphra is no longer under my employment."

Ahsoka stared up at him. Dread and loss crept up her chest, and it felt eerily like bile. She took a deep breath, and she shook her head. "You are impossible," she whispered.

"It is better this way," Vader said. He looked down. "I promise you, Ahsoka. This is not forever."

"But we'll never see eye to eye," she whispered. "We're never going to agree. You want to overthrow the Emperor, only to  _become_  Emperor! I want to abolish the Empire and restore the Republic!"

"Here, here," Ezra piped up, his voice clearly sardonic, but the sentiment was there.

"There is no  _order_  in the Republic!" Vader hissed. "A room full of thousands of pedantic, power-hungry fools can never reach an accord!"

"That is a terrible thing to say about your wife," Ahsoka remarked.

Ahsoka did not flinch as Vader's finger jerked in her face. Her eyes never left his mask, and she dared him with her eyes to come closer. To try something.

"You  _dare_ —!" he began. Ahsoka grabbed his wrist, and ignored Ezra's gasp as she stepped forward.

"Yes," she said coolly. "I dare. Because I loved Padmé too. Loss is not a commodity, Anakin. You do not own the pain of losing her. And every step you take as Darth Vader is an insult to her memory."

Vader jerked back. He whirled away from her, his cape gliding as he stalked away, his shoulders slumped forward and his respirator rasping uneasily.

"You may remain in the same cell until I leave for another mission," he said. His words hissed in the air like water on a griddle. He left with a sweep of his cape, and Ahsoka stood with a gaping mouth in the middle of her cell, feeling more and more like someone had scooped out her insides and left her absolutely bereft.

She let out a shaky breath, and then she kicked the air furiously. "Damn it!" she cried.

"Ahsoka…"

Ezra's voice was timid and unsure. Quickly, she strode toward him and gathered him up in her arms. She was so relieved to see him, so happy that he was alive, that it hardly occurred to her to wonder what he had been up to.

"Ahsoka," Ezra mumbled into her shoulder. "What the hell was that?"

She found herself sniffling, and she scrubbed her cheek with the ball of her palm as she pulled away from him.

"Vader…" Ahsoka sighed, and she slumped. She rested her head back against the wall and stared up at the gray ceiling miserably. "Force help me, how do I even begin…"

"Why don't we start by what you are to him?" Ezra squinted up at her, and she realized quickly he was suspicious.

"Ezra," Ahsoka said, her head rolling against her left shoulder. Her cheek pressed against her lekku. "Darth Vader was once my Master. Anakin Skywalker."

"I— what?" Ezra's blue eyes grew so wide that for a minute she thought she could see an echo of the little boy she had met five years ago. He seemed to shrink under the enormity of what she had just said. "Oh."

She inhaled deeply, and nodded curtly. "Yes," she said. " _Oh_. So now we're stuck here, because I think somewhere deep down he still cares about me. Not enough to let us go, of course."

"Of course."

"I'm so sorry, Ezra," Ahsoka said, looking down at him earnestly. "I never,  _ever_  wanted you to get involved in this. I wanted you as far from Vader as possible."

"Yep. I can recall that pretty well." Ezra smiled up at her, but it was a humorless smile. He drew a knee up onto the bench and rested his chin against it. "Well, this sucks."

"Yeah…"

They both stared ahead for a few minutes of easy silence. She looked at him, and she noticed a new scar on his lower jaw, a thin line preventing hair from growing.

"Did you ever get back to the Rebellion?" he asked. He sounded distant, and sad, and full of regret.

Ahsoka nodded. "How do you think I ended up here?" She smirked at him, and his thick eyebrows shot up. He chuckled.

"Uh, well, I got here because I have a bad habit of giving Hondo Ohnaka the benefit of the doubt," he said, his smile thin and devilish. Ahsoka blinked, and then groaned into her hands.

"Ezra, no," she gasped, laughter bubbling up into her voice. "Not Hondo! You can never trust Hondo!"

"Yes, I know." Ezra laughed, and he shrugged. "I love the guy, but he's really an awful friend. Anyway, turns out the so called Jedi artifacts Hondo managed to smuggle were marked. It was my fault for being careless."

"Is that what you've been doing?" Ahsoka tilted her head at him curiously. "Hunting down old Jedi contraband?"

Ezra smiled, and it turned into a tight grimace fast. "Uhh…" He held up a hand and swished it back and forth. "Sorta…? That's more like a hobby. I've been smuggling for the most part."

"Oh no," Ahsoka said, her voice bland at this remark. She barely contained her laughter. "Not a  _smuggler_. Of all the shameless things!"

"Aw… come on." He shifted uncomfortably as she laughed at him. "It's not such a bad gig. And Hondo always said I'd make a good pirate."

"Hondo will say literally  _anything_ , buddy," Ahsoka told him, patting his shoulder gently. "You know that literally everyone thought you were dead though, right?"

Ezra lurched upright, stumbling to his feet and looking down at her frantically. "What?" he gasped. "No! I sent a transmission— I had Chopper bring my lightsaber and— and Kanan's— back to Hera. Did he not show them?"

"When I asked," Ahsoka said very slowly, "all Sabine said was that you were gone. I think Chopper got damaged in the firefight, because when I spoke to Hera— and by the way, she had no intention of talking about either of you— she said that she was still working on getting back data from his memory. So…"

"So," Ezra breathed, holding his head in absolute terror, "they've thought I've been dead for two years, and… and they're going to find out I'm alive in an  _execution holo_. Oh… Karabast!"

Ezra kicked the bench, and Ahsoka jumped to her feet. She gripped his shoulders, and she lifted her chin high.

"Breathe," she said. "Deep breaths, okay? We'll get out of here eventually, and then Sabine can punch you in the face, and we'll all have a laugh."

"I don't want Sabine to punch me in the face!" Ezra gasped. "I want my friends to know I'm alive! I— okay, yes, I did technically abandon them, because I'm a screw up and an awful person, and I know it was wrong, but I— I  _had_  to! I couldn't go back to the  _Ghost_ , not… not when…"

"Kanan," Ahsoka said softly.

Ezra averted his eyes, but she could see them glistening. His shoulders were shaking, and he stared vacantly at the door of her cell. His shields were still strong, and she was thankful that she could only faintly feel his unbearable sorrow.

"Ezra," Ahsoka said, placing a hand on his shoulder. His shining blue eyes shot up to her face, and his lower lip trembled. "I might be the only person in the whole galaxy who understands how you feel right now. Did I ever tell you why I left the Jedi Order?"

Ezra's lip stopped trembling, and he peered up at her curiously. He shook his head. So she led him back to the bench, and she took a deep breath. And so she began her story.

A story that, perhaps, had more to do with the creation of Darth Vader than she cared to admit.

By the time she finished, Ezra's tears were long past. He watched her with varying degrees of pity and confusion and empathy.

"Running away," Ahsoka told him softly, "is not always a cowardly thing. Sometimes, in order to grow, you must wander first."

"Words of wisdom from Yoda?" Ezra asked bitterly.

"Nope." Ahsoka winked at him. "That one's all me."

Ezra closed his eyes. He rested his cheek against her shoulder.

They waited in silence, and wondered what the next moment would bring. And the next, and the next, and the next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "to wander is to grow" is one of my favorite quotes. it's by victor hugo, and i bastardized it for this purpose.


End file.
